


Moments

by msred



Series: Starting Over [38]
Category: Actor RPF, American (US) Actor RPF, Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Family, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Humor, Long-Distance Relationship, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26759383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: We know what it looks like to fall in love with Chris Evans, but what does it look like when Chris Evans falls in love?Each chapter (aside from the preface) will correspond to an existing story (or chapter of a longer story) in the series but be written from Chris's side instead of the narrator's. And like the main series, these chapters will go in whatever order my whims dictate. So while this one does start at the beginning, the chapters won't necessarily be chronological after that.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 68
Kudos: 71





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> I strongly, strongly suggest making sure you've read the original main story before reading its chapter in this piece, as these chapters are often going to be shorter than the originals and won't include all the set-up or backstory.

Life is just a string of moments. That’s how Chris sees it, anyway. Some moments are in your control, others aren’t. Some you create and some happen to you. But either way, you just have to go with them. You can’t spend your time dwelling on the ones that have passed, because they’re over and there’s nothing you can do about them. And if you spend too much time thinking about the ones that haven’t happened yet, that might or might not come to fruition, you’ll end up living in a constant state of anxiety, letting fear control your life. Trust him, he’s been there. And sometimes he finds himself right back in those old bad habits. But he’s gotten better at recognizing that as it’s happening so that he can nip it in the bud, remind himself of the things he’s learned, the parts of Eastern philosophy that have appealed so strongly to him, that help him believe that he is not his worst thoughts about himself, even that the struggle is good, valuable, something to be cherished and grow through.

  
The things that connect those moments, that make them powerful and valuable and something worth living through, and for, are the people and the relationships that shape them. Just like the moments themselves, some of those you get to choose and some happen to you. No one gets to choose their family, for example, the people with whom they share their biological roadmap. Honestly though, if given the choice, Chris would choose his family every time. Really, he could never have even imagined a better group of people to grow up with, to learn from, to have on his side. He’s lucky that way, he knows that. And then there are other people, other relationships, that are out of your control as well, the results of circumstance. There are teachers and schoolmates, co-workers and supervisors, those random people whose paths cross yours for no reason other than chance.

Where things start to get interesting, where you begin to have some power, some control, is when you start to decide what to do with those chance meetings, those people who come into your life because, well, right place right time, and all that. What do you build out of those moments?

Chris tries his best to be kind to everyone he meets, to start. The ‘Lisa Evans Effect,’ he calls it, because he can already feel the sting of her palm against the back of his head if he were to even consider being rude to someone who hadn’t directly earned it, from an assistant on a film set to a member of craft services to a stranger on the street.

As far as relationships, well, he’s almost a little embarrassed to admit that making friends has always come easily to him, just because he knows it sounds cocky, too self-assured. It’s true, though. Maybe it’s because of the Lisa Evans Effect, maybe it’s because he just loves people - loves hearing their stories and making them smile and building those connections - maybe it just _is_. Whatever it is, friendships are easy for him. They come naturally and they last and grow and he’s as loyal as the day is long. 

So he’s got his family, who he loves more than he can put into words and who have taught him more about how to live and how to be a good man than he can ever repay. And he’s got his friends, a group that grows daily, it seems, and that includes his Boston boys (and a few girls, too) who he’s known since he was still young enough to convince Scott to pee his own pants (they were still too old for that, though, he can admit) and also people he’s met as recently as just the last few weeks or so. And sure, sometimes people fall out of that group, not because anyone is at fault but because of time and distance and because it’s just what happens, sometimes. (That’s another thing he’s learned from studying both philosophy and mental health, that sometimes the end of a relationship, the loss of a person from your life, isn’t because something went wrong and isn’t necessarily the failure of said relationship. It’s just that it ran its course.) He’d like to believe that if he ran into one of those once-upon-a-time friends today that they’d share a hello and a handshake, maybe even a hug, and part ways happier for having seen one another again, glad for the knowledge that both parties are still living and thriving.

So that just leaves his love life, his romantic relationships. Those have been, well, he can’t complain, not really. He dated in high school, of course, the way teenagers do, nothing more, nothing less. And he played around in his early 20s, when he was new to L.A. and full of youth and hormones and far more confidence than he’d rightly earned and thought he was far cooler than he’d ever been. Then the actual relationships had started - established, long-term connections with women in the industry who, he felt, _got it_. They knew what his life was like, what it consisted of, that he would, sometimes, be paid to walk around half-naked (or more) in front of a camera and kiss and touch other women. They got it because they also lived it. Each of those relationships had come with its own lessons, both about what worked and what didn’t, had shown him where he was a good boyfriend and where he still needed work. They’d come with challenges, too, of course, some his fault and some very much not, but he tried to remind himself that the challenges were just another opportunity for growth, for him to get closer to the man he was supposed to be. 

And then they’d ended, each one, for one reason or another (and, for the most part, restarted, and he was sure there was some deep, psychological or philosophical reason for that, maybe that he wanted to go back to try to fix any mistakes he’d made because he couldn't stand the idea of being the bad guy in anyone's story, maybe that somewhere deep inside he was still that 17-year-old kid devastated over his parents’ divorce, trying somehow to undo that pain he still occasionally felt, but mostly, he thought, it was just the comfort of being with someone who already _knew_ him), and he’d been on his own for a while. Not lonely, per se, because he did have his family and his friends and, well, it’s not exactly like his bed was growing cold in the meantime, but he had to admit that he was looking forward to the day when he’d have that again. And maybe, just maybe, have it stick. He’d started getting the ‘wife and kids’ questions over the past handful of years, and yeah, he did want that, just like he always told the interviewers he did. But what he really wanted, even more than all the ‘domestic shit’ he joked about being a sucker for, was a partner, someone who really did get him (on more than a, ‘hey, we have the same job,’ level, because he was starting to think that maybe that in and of itself wasn’t enough), someone who’d call him on his shit but also appreciate that he felt everything a little too strongly and loved a little too hard and just generally got in over his head sometimes because he couldn’t not. Because it was impossible for him to _truly_ envision the rest of it until he’d found her. Then, well, he figured after that things would happen the way they were meant to happen.


	2. Maybe Someday We Could be Friends; Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Original chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221453/chapters/47921569

_ End of June/beginning of July, Year 1 _

Chris is buzzing, just downright vibrating with energy at the cellular level, when he gets off the phone with Favreau. He’s been interested in this film since he first heard about it through the grapevine that is the movie industry and, well, he wants in. Badly. On the one hand, it’s far closer to Steve Rogers than anything else he’s done since leaving the hero behind him, and he’s not trying to go back to that (he loved that character, truly, and he appreciates who he’s become because of him, but he’s ready to move on, doesn’t want to be pigeonholed for the rest of his life). It’s a military movie, specifically a movie about a man who stands up to the orders he’s given because of his own moral code (and yeah, he sees the parallels there, okay). The difference is this one’s  _ real _ , literally. It’s real and grounded in a way that few other roles he’s done were. 

But there’s so much more than that, his desire to be a part of that film is about so much more than himself. It’s the fact that it’s so, so timely; the incident in Iran that had taken a handful of lives and shattered innumerable more had happened not even six months earlier. It’s the fact that, from what he can tell, it’s going to be honest, something that so many American military movies aren’t. He doesn’t know a lot, not yet, but he’s researched the writer, a young guy whose past credits are limited to journalism and documentaries, and he definitely didn’t get the vibe from any of his work that he was the type to glorify or romanticize American force just because it was, well, American.

Chris has always had a deep respect for the men and women who make the choice and the sacrifice to serve their country, his country, and that respect is a huge part of the reason it makes him cringe and grind his teeth a little every time he sees them being used as pawns, either directly, by politicians throwing around their names and images to back up whatever position they are trying to push, or more indirectly, by people like those in his industry who make films and television shows that are little more than thinly veiled attempts to reinforce the idea that any use of American force is right and justified, no matter the consequences. He’s pretty sure this film isn’t going to be that, and that excites him. Jon Favreau signing on to direct has only made him more excited, because while he doesn’t know the writer, he  _ does  _ know Favreau, and he trusts him to do this properly. 

And now he’s pacing around his house, making laps of the entire first floor with Dodger at his heels, yipping and dancing because he doesn’t know what’s got Chris all worked up, but he knows there’s an extra energy there, and he wants to be part of it. That energy is because Favreau just told him the role is his, if he wants it and if his team can get the legal stuff worked out with another  _ very  _ tentative agreement he had going that would have interfered, schedule-wise. (He’ll get out of that one, even if it costs him something, that’s how much he wants this one.) It’s also because he’s learned that not only does he get a chance to be a part of this project that he’s like 90% sure he really, strongly believes in, but that the widow of the man he’s playing, the man who made the decision to ignore orders, orders that would have made for a great news story about a big, powerful American strike and that would also have resulted in the loss of life of many local civilians, is also on-board as a consultant. And Favreau has just sworn that it’s legit, not that Hollywood thing where they throw her name in the credits so she doesn’t sue them later. No, she’s already seen the full first-draft of the script (which is more than he’s seen, actually) and is in the process of making notes to send to Favreau and the writer. Chris likes that. He likes it a lot. 

***

_ One week later (early July, Year 1) _

It’s a bit of a whirlwind after that, even by Hollywood standards. One day he’s calling Favreau and telling him he wants in, whatever it takes. Then before he knows it, his team is calling him, telling him they’ve cleared the way, legally, so as long as Favreau meant it when he said the role was his if he wanted it (and he’s never known Favreau to be anything but honest), he’s in. And the next thing he knows, Favreau’s calling him up, inviting him to Virginia because he’s got meetings scheduled with the commander at Langley Air Force Base and, more importantly, as far as Chris is concerned, the widow.

She invites them to meet her at the school where she works, which is  _ different _ , Chris thinks, but not bad. In fact, it works out pretty well, since it’s the middle of summer and the place is all but deserted. (He just can’t help but wonder why  _ she’s  _ there, but then he hears his sister’s voice telling him it’s none of his business and he resolves not to ask.) He’d been right behind Favreau as they’d left the base, but by the time they arrive at the school and he gets parked, Favreau’s already at the door, pulling the young woman into a hug, before he can even get out of his rental. He looks around, out of habit more than anything, to make sure he’s not about to be ambushed by fans seeking autographs or that his picture isn’t being taken without his knowledge, but he is really and truly alone in the parking lot. Besides, he grins to himself as he thinks, for once his NASA cap might  _ actually  _ be a good disguise, since, unbeknownst to him until that day, Langley Air Force Base also happens to be connected to a NASA research facility. He makes a mental note to have his assistant find out how he can get some kind of tour or something.

The first thought he has, when he’s close enough to really see her, is, against his better judgment, that she’s adorable. She is, though. And he doesn’t think it in any sort of sexual way or anything like that, he just can’t not notice how cute she is. She’s probably not too much younger than him, he thinks, and he’s not basing that on her appearance so much as he is on the fact that he knows how old her late husband was (only two years younger than him, nothing at all by movie standards) and that he knows she’s a high school teacher and that they’ve - she’s - been at this base, not her first, for several years now. She’s wearing this cute little polka dot dress that buttons all the way down, and that he can only see the bottom half of, since she’s got a hoodie pulled on over it - so maybe it’s a skirt, but he’s pretty sure it’s a dress, for whatever reason - and little flat sandals and her hair is piled into this, well,  _ mess  _ on top of her head, and the thing that really gets him is that the mess is being held there by a pencil, of all things. 

He goes to introduce himself, but she starts rambling because obviously she knows exactly who he is, but she’s so cute and self-deprecating when she does it that he can’t help but laugh, and he really wants to hug her, so he does. After he asks her if it’s okay, of course, because that’s another part of the Lisa Evans Effect - he never, ever touches a woman unless he’s 100% sure that she’s going to be okay with being touched by him.

She guides them down the hall to her classroom, and halfway there she gets nervous, even embarrassed, for reasons Chris doesn’t understand. Until he’s in the classroom, that is. Because there, amongst the typical classroom stuff and the inviting library and the cozy seating and the many, many pictures and cards and sticky notes filling the space around her desk, is his face, hand-drawn and quite good, actually. He acknowledges it, because it would just be weirder if he didn’t, but tries to keep it as light as possible so as not to embarrass her even more. Turns out she’s just a big Steve Rogers fan - he can’t say that he blames her there - and she’s actually used his first  _ Captain America  _ movie in class, which is kinda cool, and a student made her this really pretty awesome poster as a gift. He can’t decide which he likes more, the fact that she’s a Captain America fan and used the movie in class (he’s a part of something young people are  _ learning  _ from, which makes him feel great), or the fact that her students make her gifts. That says a lot, he thinks. 

They go over the script together, the three of them, and talk about her notes - and she has a lot of notes - and he pays incredibly close attention. He wants to get this right, just as much as he’d wanted to be a part of it. But later, when he’s driving back to his hotel, where he’ll meet up with Favreau and they’ll go over the script some more, he thinks about her smile, rare but precious, and the way she’d blushed when she realized who he was, and then even more so when he’d asked if he could hug her, and then about her strength, even through the pain he could see in her eyes, and he decides that he gets it, why this man that he’s going to play loved her.

***

_ One week later (early July, Year 1) _

A week later he finds himself back in her classroom. Well, he doesn’t  _ find  _ himself there, as such, he’d had Favreau call her and ask if she would be willing to meet with him again. It’s just that, well, he really wants to get this right. And he feels like the best way to make sure that happens is through her. “I just, I really want to be able to get in the right place, mentally,” he tells her as he’s following her into her classroom. “I’ve, uh, I’ve been told I can overthink things, so I didn’t really want to force Jon to sit through all that last week. Unfortunately for you, you’re stuck with me,” he apologizes, but she gives him one of those smiles and promises that she appreciates the effort.

She seems more nervous at first than the last time. He guesses it’s because it’s just the two of them, and he hopes, probably the first time he’s hoped this about anything ever, that that’s about his celebrity. Because the other option is that he’s making her nervous because of reasons that have to do with  _ him _ and, well, that would fucking suck, to be blunt. She starts to relax though, once they start talking about her husband, and he can almost see her opening up, blossoming, in a way, as she takes charge of the conversation. She’s still nervous, that much is very obvious as she stumbles and rambles her way through an explanation of why she was surprised to find out that he’d been cast for the role, but it’s a cute kind of nervous, and rambling, well, that he knows what to do with, how to work with, because it no longer feels like she might be scared of him. 

He asks if she has a picture of her late husband, and the one she shows him is of the two of them at some very formal-looking military function. He’s wearing dress blues that sport what appears to Chris’s civilian eyes to be an impressive number of ribbons and medals and she’s wearing a deep blue one-shouldered dress, her hair pulled back simply but elegantly and her make-up subtle enough to not be a distraction but noticeable enough to accentuate her cheekbones and her blue, blue eyes (he’d have to be completely oblivious not to know a little bit about makeup, with the amount of time he’s spent in hair and make-up chairs of his own, often being worked on right next to his female co-stars). “You look happy,” he tells her as he hands the framed picture back to her and she sets it just so on the corner of her desk, but what he’s thinking is  _ You look beautiful.  _ Both are true, but he knows that only one is really appropriate for him to say, all things considered. 

He stays for a few hours, and when it’s all said and done he feels like he actually has a pretty good handle on the man he’s going to try to become starting next week, beyond the words on the page. He’s learned a lot about her, too, starting with the fact that on top of the obvious, wanting to do right by her late husband and his memory, she wants the same thing from the movie that he does - honesty. In fact, it seems that their views and beliefs align on a lot of things. By the time he finally leaves, he’s followed her on Twitter - two different accounts, a public and a private, which he finds a little funny, with him being the one who’s a celebrity and all - and looked at those Captain America projects she’d mentioned the last time he was there. Well, he’d tried to look at them, he kept finding himself distracted by the way she had a story for each one, laughing each time she told him about something embarrassing one of the kids had said or done while presenting, her eyes lighting up every time she told him that the creator of a specific project was one of  _ her  _ kids, one she’d adopted, as she put it. It was hard for him to focus on anything other than her hands flying around, or grasping at her top over her heart, or her smile, wide and bright. He just really likes, really respects, how much she cares about what she does, and the people she does it for. 

He’s still really, really excited about the movie. He’s excited about doing something real and honest and meaningful. He’s also really excited that because of the movie, he gets to be friends with her.

***

_ 2 months later (early September, Year 1) _

He stays in touch the whole time he’s filming in New Mexico, sending the occasional text, but mostly going through her two Twitter profiles and sending her direct messages in response to some of her tweets. He tries to reach out to her in some way at least twice a week. He’s not even sure why, exactly, except that he’d really enjoyed seeing how happy she got when she really started opening up with him that last day in her classroom, and he’d also gotten the impression somehow that she didn’t get to do that often. A Twitter dm every few days wasn’t going to change her life or anything, but if she got one extra smile out of it on those days, he was good with that. 

He finds himself nodding in agreement with pretty much all of her political tweets - then shaking his head at himself when he realizes about half of them are just retweets of  _ his  _ tweet with her own comments added - and he can't help but laugh at the self-deprecating, embarrassing quips she shares about herself, but his favorites are either the ones where she showcases the things she's doing with and for her kids (those are the only ones that come close to giving herself credit for anything) and the ones that involve her dog, a black and white 'neurotic mess of a border collie mix,' as she'd put it, that she rescued about five years ago. He can't dm her fast enough when he comes across one from last summer of the pup sprawled on her back begging for belly rubs, Captain America shield emblazoned on the harness stretched across her chest.

He’s settling in on the couch in his rental in New Mexico with a beer in hand to watch some pre-season NFL chatter on ESPN in mid-August when they start talking about a Kansas City wide receiver who’s going to sit out for the season. His first thought is that Ruffalo is going to be devastated. As he keeps watching, though, his focus shifts, because it turns out the kid, a third-year player with a wife and a fuckin’ adorable toddler, is taking the time off because his wife has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and he’s going to spend the time with her and his kid instead, which Chris thinks is really damn admirable, since he’s taking a 50% pay cut for the next two years to make up for it (he’s going to get paid half the next year’s salary this year even though he’s not playing, and the following year when he does play he’ll get the other half - which also, he begrudgingly admits to himself, makes him admire the Chiefs organization as well) and giving up his free agency at the end of the season so the Chiefs can make sure they get their payoff out of him. It’s when the kid says, “Look, I love the game, and I love my teammates like brothers, but she’s my wife, and nobody compares to her and my baby boy. We’ve got faith that this is all gonna come out okay, that the doctors can do what they need to do, but just in case it doesn’t, when the choice is between playing the game with my boys and spending the time with her and my little guy, there is no choice. She wins every time,” that Chris is hit with an idea. He mutes the television and fishes his phone out of his pocket to call Favreau.

It’s just after Labor Day when they head back to Virginia to film some scenes that need to be shot on Langley. He wasn’t initially sure if he would see her again on that trip, though he’d hoped he would, even if it was just over coffee or something. But now it’s kind of a necessity. She meets them on base when she finishes up her day at school and as soon as she comes in, looking tired but definitely not unhappy to see them, he goes in for the hug, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her for just a second. He realizes as he’s pulling away that he didn’t ask her if it was okay that time, but he’s pretty sure he gave her time to back away before he had her in his hold. And when he can see her face again she’s smiling, so he figures it’s all good.

They make small talk for a minute or two before Favreau just dives right in, telling her Chris had an idea he wanted to run by her. And he definitely wishes they’d both had a little more time to prepare for what he’s about to say, but oh well. As it is, he has no real choice but to just put it out there - he thinks they should add a scene to the movie, one that includes her. She looks unsure, at first, until he says that he thinks she should be the one to play herself, and then she looks downright terrified. He recognizes a panic attack when he sees one, and she’s definitely about to head down that path, so he asks Jon to give them a second alone. Jon’s an awesome guy, no doubt, kind and considerate and respectful, but Chris doesn’t think he’s actually friends with her, the way he believes himself to be. He doesn’t know her  _ super _ well just yet, but he thinks she might be more comfortable talking about this with just him rather than with the movie’s director.

It doesn’t take much once they’re alone for him to convince her to do it, and he doesn’t have to say anything that he doesn’t mean whole-heartedly. He  _ does  _ think the movie will be better for having a scene that includes her, that it will have more of an emotional impact and more of that honesty they both want by highlighting just one more sacrifice that was made and one more life that was impacted, he  _ does  _ think she is the best choice to play herself, no matter who else might be available, he  _ is  _ positive that she can only make the film better, not worse, and, most importantly, he  _ absolutely will  _ let all the blame fall on his shoulders if things don’t work out. 

“Is that a yes?” he asks when she finally nods her head, small and timid, and when she answers  _ Yes _ , he leans across the arms of both of their chairs to hug her again, just one arm this time, wrapped around her shoulders and pulling her over onto him a little bit until her head rests on his shoulder and his cheek lands on the top of her head.

***


	3. Maybe Someday We Could be Friends; Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Original chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221453/chapters/48049882#workskin

_1 ½ week later (mid-September, Year 1)_

Chris shows up to her house a couple hours earlier than his actual call time. He tells Favreau he wanted to be available in case they need him or there’s any way he can help, but honestly? He wants to meet and hang out with her dog. All the doors are wide open when he gets there, so he lets himself in and nods to the crew members setting up cameras and lights in the living room before heading down the hall where one of the ADs tells him she and Favreau are. She’s sitting at a vanity, her back to the table itself, and Jon is in front of her, hands on his hips as he listens to her talk. She stops speaking when she sees him in the doorway and sends him a little smile. Jon turns then and waves him into the room and asks her to start over.

He turns on his professional, attentive side to the maximum extent possible when she starts to explain how that last morning with her husband had gone. There hadn’t been an actual script written up for the scene, since it was just the two of them and she’d already lived through it. He’s only got a few sentences to say anyway, so the script isn’t that big of a deal. They’d decided she would just walk him through the morning and they’d put it together; he’s happy to follow her lead. So he listens to every word she says and watches her intently, watching her face and her body language to determine what’s happening under her words, which parts of the morning are more poignant for her to remember and which are just painful. 

He's just finished repeating the whole thing back to her when there's a soft knock on the door jamb behind him. "Mom?" the young woman asks timidly, her eyes going wide as saucers when he turns and gives her a smile. "Victoria," she says in response, her cheeks flushed and her voice a little breathless, when he introduces himself and puts his hand out for her to shake. It turns out that Victoria, who his new friend had practically adopted for real, letting the younger woman live with her for a while when her mom kicked her out just after her graduation, is there to do her makeup. Apparently that's her thing, and she was responsible for that look he'd admired in the picture at the school, so while he'd already appreciated the fact that Favreau was willing to give an opportunity to a young, aspiring makeup artist, he now approves for quality reasons and not just kind-hearted ones.

Victoria's unpacking all her tools and supplies and he's starting to feel more than a little out of place as even Favreau is in on the makeup planning talk, then Victoria asks where Millie is. "She's outside," his co-star for the day answers, "where she can't get under anyone's feet."

Chris barely takes time to think before he says, "Oh, can I, should I go hang out with her? I've got a while before I need to start getting ready." A small trailer’s been parked in her driveway for him to change in and be seen to by his own hair and makeup artist when the time comes, but he’s still got a good hour or so before he needs to head that way. She argues half-heartedly for a second but he can tell it’s just because she doesn’t want him to feel obligated, so he insists that he really, _really_ doesn’t mind. She directs him to the treats, because a little bribery can never hurt, and he only just manages a, _See you in a bit_ before he practically skips off to go play in the backyard with the pup. The treats were definitely a good idea, since she’s pretty skittish at first, but five minutes in he’s really glad he’s got a wardrobe waiting for him in that trailer because his jeans are covered in grass and his tshirt’s rumpled all to hell from all but rolling around on the ground with her. He loves it. 

He heads inside a while later, all dressed and camera-ready, just as Victoria’s heading out, and his heart plummets, just fucking drops right through the floor, when she looks up at him from the recliner she’s sitting in and her eyes go all big and watery. He hasn’t known her all that long yet, but he knows heartbreak when he sees it. He feels like an absolute piece of shit when he realizes she looks like that because she didn’t know he was going to be wearing her late husband’s uniform. He promised he’d look out for her throughout this whole thing, and he’s already fucked that up. Well, he didn’t promise that in so many words, but it’s what he meant that day in that office on base when he talked her into doing this. He feels like shit, but she lets him off easy, too easy, as far as he’s concerned, and he heads down the hall so they can start filming. 

He knows they’re filming her real life, but he still finds himself impressed by her poise and composure, how natural she is at what they’re doing. He also doesn’t let himself forget that it’s not just any point in her real life, it’s the moment at which her life changed irrevocably, and not for the better, the moment she saw her husband, her partner of over a decade, for the last time. He’s doing his job, and he focuses on doing it well, but he also really hopes when he wraps his arms around her to hold her close to him before he ‘leaves’ that she gets some actual comfort out of it. It does take him by surprise, a little, when he gets into the truck his character’s going to drive off in and he looks back at her standing in the doorway and she lifts one hand gingerly and wiggles just her index finger of him in a gesture that reminds him so much of his sweet little niece that his heart constricts. They hadn’t talked about that earlier. He doesn’t let it throw him, though, just does what feels natural, which is to take his hand off the steering wheel and send the same little single-finger wave right back to her, along with a smile whose sadness is half acted, half real.

The front door closes as he’s putting the truck into reverse and he backs up just to the corner at the end of her yard before the AD who’s outside with him is waving at him to stop. He feels like that went pretty well, _really_ well for a first take with a scene partner who’s never acted before. He’s smiling to himself, excited to hear what Favreau thinks, as he crosses the front yard, but just before he gets to the front door, contemplating whether to take all three steps up to the stoop in one go, he hears the AD behind him calling out _Mr. Evans! Mr. Evans!_ , a little breathless. He’s grinning and rolling his eyes good-naturedly when he turns around and tells her to please, _please_ call him by his first name, but she looks a little frantic so he stops and asks what’s up. “Mister, um,” she looks frazzled now and he feels bad, “Mr. Favreau said to tell you to come in the back. He said to tell you the dog’s inside, so don’t worry about the gate.” He blinks a little dumbly and just says okay, because he doesn’t get it, but hey, it’s _literally_ his job to follow directions, so sure. He takes off toward the end of the house to go in the back, stepping just a little off his path to drop his hand to the AD’s shoulder and tell her that she’s been doing a great job. 

He’s surprised by how quiet it is when he gets inside. There’s a wall of crew members blocking his way when he goes from the den into the dining room, so he taps a cameraman on the shoulder and before he has a chance to ask what’s up the guy is looking at him like he just rescued his cat from a tree or something and calling over Favreau. “Hey man, what’s going on?” Chris asks his director once he’s right in front of him, crew members still blocking them off from the living room area of the open concept space. 

“We’ve, uh, we’ve got a situation,” Jon says quietly, nudging aside a boom operator so they can get through. He leaves one hand on Chris’s shoulder and nods toward the front door.

Chris feels like someone has just driven their knee right up through his gut. She’s sitting with her back to the door, her knees pulled up to her chest and her face buried in them as her entire body shakes, trembles, really, with sobs. “Has she said anything?” he asks Favreau without taking his eyes off her.

“No. She doesn’t really know any of the crew, so I don’t think any of them feel comfortable, ya know, getting in her personal business. I was gonna give her another minute or two, then -”

“I’ll talk to her,” Chris says, his eyes still glued to her and sweet, sweet Millie, practically climbing on her in an attempt to comfort her. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nods. No offense to Favreau, he’s an awesome guy, truly. But he just, he feels like it should be him. Part of that is undoubtedly the guilt he feels because he’s convinced he has to be at least somewhat to blame. The rest, though, the rest is an inexplicable, and probably slightly selfish, desire to be the one who helps her stop crying, combined with the fact that he’s her friend, and no one else there is. “I’ll deal with it.”

He takes a couple steps toward her and Favreau signals to the crew members to disperse so they aren’t all just standing around watching. Before he gets to her though, something hits him and he stops, undoing the buttons of the ABU blouse he’s wearing and shrugging it off his shoulders, tilting his head back in thanks when Jon gestures for him to hang it - carefully, obviously - off one of the light towers. Once he’s in just the tshirt, much softer than the outer uniform top and not bearing her late husband’s name, he closes the rest of the distance between her and himself. He scratches Millie a few times on the top of the head and the back of her neck to let her know she’s been a good girl for trying to take care of her momma then he lowers himself to the floor so that they’re hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder. “I’m gonna put my arm around you now, if that’s okay,” he tells her in a quiet, reverent whisper. She doesn’t say anything, and he’s not even 100% sure she nods her head, though he thinks she does, but she angles her body toward him and he’s gonna take that as consent as long as her body language doesn’t say otherwise when he actually touches her. 

He moves slowly, first just barely touching the shoulder closest to him then moving his hand slowly and carefully across that shoulder and behind her neck until finally, his arm goes all the way around her and he can curl his fingers around her opposite shoulder. He gives her every chance to push him away, but she never does, and in fact, almost immediately she lets herself go so that his body is bearing the weight of hers. After only a few seconds she’s angled her body toward his and her hand is fisting his tshirt at his opposite shoulder as her tears soak straight through the cotton and into his skin. It burns him, those tears on his skin. Not literally, of course. But figuratively, metaphorically, emotionally, to have her crying there against his chest, sobbing so forcefully that the cotton of the would-be military issued tshirt is soaked through, makes him feel like his nerve endings have been burned raw. This is everything he’d wanted to avoid, everything he’d thought, naively, that he could protect her from. Because he hasn’t known her all that long, but they’re friends, and he’s not so blind that he can’t see how special she is, how much she doesn’t deserve this pain on top of everything else.

So he holds her. He holds her until Favreau comes out from behind the monitor on the other side of the dining table and pulls the headset off his ears to drape it around his neck and shoots Chris a thumbs-up with pleasantly surprised eyebrows. He holds her until all the crew members have shuffled out of the house and Favreau looks at him questioningly, nodding understandingly and heading out behind everyone else when Chris waves him off. He holds her until Millie trusts that he’s taking care of her Momma and trots off to the other side of the room to jump into her chair, still watching them closely. He holds her, without complaint, without any desire to be anywhere else, until the light has gone dusky and the world is quiet and she’s finally able to stop crying and pushes herself up off him, her voice raw and ragged as she immediately starts to apologize.

He tries to stop her, to tell her it’s not remotely necessary, but it starts to sound less like an apology and more like something she just needs to get out, so he shuts up and lets her talk. She talks about how she hadn’t allowed herself to truly let go and mourn before that day, how she’d spent all her time putting on a brave face and forcing herself to be strong for everyone else (which he thinks is bullshit, for the record, because why the hell had no one sat her down and told her that it was okay for her to just make things about her for once, especially in the wake of her husband’s death?), and how, as he’d feared, it had been seeing her husband’s name - _her_ last name - on his chest as she relived it all that had sent her over the edge.

He apologizes then, because _shit_ , he should’ve known better, should’ve at least prepared her better. And then he spends a few minutes, when she realizes they’re alone and Favreau and the crew have all cleared out, assuring her that they’d gotten what they needed, film-wise, and that she absolutely didn’t mess anything up. Then, finally, he talks her into going to dinner with him, because not only does he want to make sure she eats something (knowing what he does about her, he’s not convinced she always takes care of herself physically any more than she does emotionally and he’s pretty sure that if he leaves her there alone she won’t eat anything at all), he wants to get her out of that house for a while. He decides he’ll call Jon, actually, while she’s changing and cleaning up, and see if there’s anyone he can send out to put her house back together while they’re out. She tries to decline, telling him he doesn’t have to, but he tells her that’s not how he treats friends. He doesn’t love the surprised look on her face when he says that, but the next thing she says is _Do you like barbecue?_ and yeah, he does.

 _Fuck._ She wasn’t joking when she said the restaurant just a couple miles from her house was fantastic. Even before their actual meals come, he’s in love with the local craft beer he gets on draft, and he’s contemplating licking cornbread crumbs off his bread plate when he hears a couple of nearby voices that put him on alert. They’re two male voices, young, or at the very least not all that deep. They’re coming closer and they seem to be arguing. More specifically, they seem to be arguing about him, and whether his dinner is a date and if it’s okay to come over and say something to them. He looks up at her apologetically through his eyelashes and gives her a smile that he hopes conveys _I am so fucking sorry about this,_ because even though he can already tell she’s going to be kind and forgiving about it, he hates that she’s going to have to deal with it at all. 

Before he has a chance to prepare her any more than that, the two young men are approaching from behind her, one far more confidently than the other. Then, suddenly and surprisingly, the young man in the lead asks, “Mom?” and her head pops up, prompting a much more enthusiastic, “Mom!” and there’s a flurry of activity as she jumps off her high-top chair and they hug. Chris can’t exactly not eavesdrop, since it’s all happening right in front of him, so he just sits back in his chair and rests his chin in his palm and enjoys this opportunity to see her so in her element. Her kid, Ren, introduces her to the other young man - turns out unlike them, those two _are_ on a date, something that makes her look happy and proud and relieved all at once - and when it’s her turn to introduce him she just says _This is my friend, Chris_ and honestly, he doesn’t know why he winks at her when she does, but she blushes this pretty shade of pink and he tells himself that the reason it makes that warmth spread outward from his stomach is because he’s just really glad to see that she seems to be pretty much recovered from earlier.

They have a really nice little chat with the kids, just small talk, really, and she and Ren have a moment right before he leaves when he sees her slip so fully into her teacher-mom persona that it’s almost like she forgets he’s even there. He really, really likes what he sees then, when she acts like he’s not there watching, like the only thing that matters for her in that moment is taking care of her kid. She looks fulfilled, like she has a purpose that she’s proud of, like she’s happy. He wants to tell her that, but he tries to ease into it and she just shifts the subject by making a joke and then their food comes. He tries to bring it up again, once the server is gone, but she’s having no part of letting him compliment her and when she makes yet another joke at her own expense about how he isn’t going to want to watch how she’s about to destroy her ribs, he gives up, laughing and digging into his own, quite frankly, fucking delicious dinner. It’s not like he won’t get more time to tell her those things later.

***

_1 ½ weeks later (late September, Year 1)_

He can’t stop moving. He just, he’s bouncing around his rental and he can’t stop smiling to himself and he’s a happy, clock-watching kangaroo, is what he fucking is. They finished shooting for the day since lunch like they’ve done the past several days, Favreau wanting to get them all home and out of the New Mexico September sun. And he and his half-Irish skin appreciate that, truly, but it means that he has to wait around for an appropriate time to do what he’s been dying to do for the last three hours, almost.

He knows that her school gets out at two, and her rehearsal for her kids’ competitive one-act play ends at 3:30, but that’s all east coast time, so the second the clock on his phone ticks over to 1:45 New Mexico time he’s hitting ‘call’ on her name. She sounds almost confused when she answers, and he finds that cute but also wishes she didn’t seem so surprised. They make small talk for less than a minute before he can’t hold it in any longer. “I just wanted to tell you, I saw the scene today.” She seems even more confused at that, so he clarifies, “The scene. _Our_ scene,” and then he rambles a bit about how Favreau showed him and several of the others a rough, unedited cut of the scene.

The whole reason he’d called was because he thought, assumed, that she would be as excited as he was, but she sounds terrified, actually. He gets it; even as stupid and cocky as he was at the time, he’d still been sure he’d totally shit the bed in the first scene he ever actually filmed - the first few movies in general, actually, and there are a lot of people out there who seem to agree with him on that, if the internet is anything to go by - and he was actually a somewhat trained actor at that point. It makes sense that she would be nervous about what they’d produced that day. But he needs her to know that she shouldn’t be, that she was amazing.

“No, really,” he tells her, then lowers his voice a little. “People cried. And not just me.” He laughs at himself so that she’ll know it’s okay to do the same, but he couldn’t be more serious. People had cried, and she had been amazing. The whole scene had been just beautiful and emotional and important, and he still hated, _hated,_ what filming it had done to her, but he was glad they had it.

He finally gets her to stop arguing with him about how good she was and he thinks he even hears a smile in her voice, so he takes that as a sign that it’s a good time to change the subject and ask her how she’s been doing, how school is going, basically just keep her on the phone talking about whatever she’ll talk to him about. He likes talking to her, likes that she’s outside his normal circles and doesn’t seem to expect anything from him, whether that’s to be the movie star or the good ole Boston Boy or anything else, really. He likes the feeling he gets in his gut when he makes her laugh, and he really likes it when she opens up and starts talking about things that she’s passionate about, like her students, or books (he’s already learned that she loves _Pride and Prejudice_ for both its romanticism and the groundedness and strength of its heroine and _The Great Gatsby_ for what it says about the disillusionment of wealth and for Fitzgerald’s use of the English language). And he loves how every time he talks to her he starts to feel like the best, least egotistical version of himself.

A few days later he’s back in L.A. for the weekend. There’s still more work to do in New Mexico, but it was Scott’s birthday earlier in the week and he’d done a whole thing with his friends on the day, but he’d made a big deal out of getting the family out to the west coast in honor of ‘his day.’ He told Chris it wouldn’t kill him to fly out from New Mexico for a couple days, and he even got Carly to agree to come out with the kids by proposing a family trip to DisneyLand. Getting their mom and Shanna to agree to come was just a formality, at that point.

Just before lunchtime, Chris finds himself on a park bench between his mom and his brother while his sisters and brother-in-law take the three kids on a ride that the two youngest are big enough to ride only with an adult partner. The visit is the first time he’s seen any of them in-person since filming started, and his mom has been asking him about it every time they have downtime. “So yeah,” he tells her right after the rest of the family moves farther ahead in line to where the kids can no longer see them to look back and wave and make goofy faces, “we’re in the middle of reshoots and fixes now. The last new stuff we shot was actually back in Virginia.”

“How was that?” she asks him, and it’s not prodding, exactly, but there’s something there, something more than when she’d asked about the stuff they’d shot in New Mexico.

“It was good,” he tells her, nodding as he does then taking a sip from the water bottle he’s been spinning in his hands. “Well,” he tilts his head a little to one side, “mostly good.” And then, because he tells his mom everything, and because it’s not like he’s trying to hide it from Scott either, he tells her about shooting the flashback scene, and about the breakdown that followed, and dinner after that, and how, when they’d gotten back to her house after dinner and he’d walked her to the door because he’s a gentleman, dammit, but also because he wanted to see if Favreau was able to get her house put back together, she’d gasped when she opened the door and saw that every last piece of equipment was gone and her living room was back to its normal state. She’d stammered for a couple seconds then seemed to realize that he must’ve had some part in it, because she spun on her heel and threw her arms around his neck, the first time she’d ever hugged him first, and when she pressed her forehead into the side of his neck he really couldn’t do anything other than run his hands up and down her back and rest his chin on her head.

“You’re a good boy, Christopher,” his mom tells him, and Scott snickers on his other side. Chris and his mom both roll their eyes and she reaches over to pat his forearm where it rests on his knee. “You’re a good _man,_ of course, but as your mother I reserve the right to always think of you as my boy.”

“Thanks Ma.” He leans over to kiss her temple, and while she’s distracted he kicks Scott’s ankle with the foot closest to him.

“I’m proud of you for being such a good friend to her,” she goes on when he pulls away. “You’re a good friend anyway, but it really seems like that’s what she needs right now, a good friend. From the sound of it I’m not sure she has enough people looking out for her, so I’m sure she appreciates your friendship more than she tells you.”

He doesn’t miss how many times she uses the word ‘friend,’ or the look she gives him, that one that all but screams _Don’t make me spell it out for you, Christopher._ He wants to protest, to roll his eyes and say _Yeah yeah Ma, I get it. I hadn’t even considered going there,_ but apparently Scott picks up on all those same things he did, because before he can speak he takes a sharp elbow to the ribs and Scott’s wearing a smirk that kind of makes him want to put him in a headlock and hold him there until he’s whining for mercy like when they were kids.

“She’s telling you not to fall in love with the poor girl. Or try to fuck her.” Lisa reaches behind both of them to smack the back of Scott’s head and Chris just glares at him, both palms out and up as if to say _Really, man?_ Because even Chris doesn’t drop the f-bomb at the happiest place on earth. Neither seem to faze Scott, because he just goes on. “Unless, please tell me you haven’t already.”

“No!” Chris shrieks. “To both,” he manages to add on more calmly.

Scott puts both hands up in front of his chest, “Hey, I’m just sayin’, you tend to fall in love at the drop of a hat. You’re like …” he trails off for a second before a conveniently placed Sleeping Beauty walks their way, “you’re like a Disney Princess.” 

And Sleeping Beauty turns at that and she smiles a coy little smile that quickly becomes a smirk and wiggles the fingers of one hand and Chris thinks she might even wink at him. He only tilts his head back a little in a nod and lifts one hand to wave back, because he’s pretty sure flirting isn’t in her job description and he doesn’t want to start some whole big thing. And besides, she’s a little too blonde for his present tastes, and her eyes are too brown, and while he’s a big fan of confidence in women, he finds that her outright boldness doesn’t do nearly as much for him as it would have even just a few months ago, thinks maybe he’s starting to appreciate a more subtle, down-to-earth approach.

***

_1 week later (early October, Year 1)_

The next time he calls her it’s quite a bit later in the day than it had been the first time. He’d tried to wait until he thought she would be free that first time, but even though her rehearsal had ended about 15 minutes before he’d called, she was still at school and she sounded a little frazzled at first. He’s hoping that by waiting a while he can avoid putting that stress on her. He really wants to call her, though, because yesterday was the last day of filming. He’s pretty sure Favreau would have let her know that, just because he’s been really big on keeping her in the loop, but he wants to make sure of it for himself.

As always, he has that tentative feeling of accomplishment that comes along with finishing a film (because he can’t know just how much was really accomplished until he _sees_ it), but he also feels that twinge of sadness that comes along pretty much every time a production ends. This one is actually especially poignant for him, because he can’t help but wonder, in the back of his mind, whether the end of filming is going to mean the end of other things as well.

That sad feeling doesn’t get any better when she answers the phone, “Hi Chris. Everything okay?” as if he wouldn’t be calling her unless there was a problem. 

“Yeah! Yeah, everything’s great,” he assures her. She still sounds a little hesitant, like she doesn’t understand why he called her, why he wants to talk to her, but he makes a joke at his own expense, something about being a control freak that’s at least half-true, and her laugh is genuine and warm. He sees his opening and changes the subject then, asking her how her rehearsals are going, and he manages to keep her on the phone for the entirety of her walk with Millie, laughing and talking excitedly about her kids and their show. When he hangs up he decides that phone call was a full-fledged accomplishment.

***

_1 week later (mid-October, Year 1)_

A week later he actively searches for an excuse to call her. He just, well, it makes him feel better to actually hear her voice sometimes, to actually force her to tell him that she’s doing okay and not let her hide behind her phone’s keyboard. He’s scrolling through one of her Twitter accounts a little mindlessly, thinking it might inspire something in him, something about sports or a tv show or a movie or anything, really, when he comes across a video from last summer. He knows from the tweet itself and from the fact that he can tell it’s a bunch of high school aged kids on a stage that it’s from a musical rehearsal. He’s looked through both of her profiles all the way to the beginning so he knows he’s seen the tweet before, but he doesn’t think he actually watched the video, so out of curiosity, he taps on it so that it fills his screen and the sound comes on. And the lead girl is, well. He’s pretty sure people would pay money to hear her sing. Hell, he’d pay money to hear her sing. It gets to the end and starts over and he lets it play through again, and the second time through he notices something he missed the first time, probably because he was so awestruck. There’s a moment, when the young woman has walked downstage and sits with her feet dangling off the front of it singing directly to the would-be audience, and she must make some mistake that his ears definitely don’t pick up on, because she makes this goofy, over-exaggerated face right at the camera and he hears a giggle from behind the camera that makes his heart do a little double-tap and warmth spread outward through his limbs.

His cheeks are still warm when the video gets to the end again and he exits Twitter to call her. He does take a second as it’s ringing to remind himself not to be disappointed if she sounds startled or skeptical when she answers, like she had the first time. And then he’s pleasantly surprised when she picks up after just the second ring with a , “Hey Chris,” that’s pleasant and chirpy and, well, happy.

He’s the one taken aback then, like she’d been the first couple times he’d called, but he manages a, “Hey back,” and she asks how he is without missing a beat. He decides then, since she seems to be in such a good mood and actually happy to hear from him, to tease her a little, and he tells her that he’s actually been feeling a bit like a stalker, since their relationship seems be be one-sided, with him always calling her and the opposite never happening. He’s joking. Mostly. But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t also fishing a little, trying to find out just exactly how she does view their friendship. She laughs openly at that, which of course makes him smile in return, and tells him that she just doesn’t like making phone calls. He can respect that, and it makes him feel a little better about the state of things between them, like maybe they’re pretty close to being on the same page. 

There’s a little more back-and-forth teasing, and she gets a full-body laugh out of him even as she’s changing the subject, asking him why it was that he called. He remembers the video then and he swears he can hear her pride when she starts talking about the young woman, a former student of hers (he’d known that already, because he recognized her from some of the pictures on her desk and in other tweets, but asking felt like a good way to get her started talking). He loves the way she sounds when she gets like that, like she had the day he’d spent in her classroom, or at dinner after they’d shot their scene together. He feels like he’s getting a glimpse at the _real_ her, the strong, vibrant, passionate woman under all the pain and all the shit she’s had to deal with. He wants more of that.

He also wants to be respectful, though, and she told him that she didn’t like phone calls all that much, so after a brief internal debate, he sighs and says, “Well, that’s all I really had. I guess I could’ve dm’ed you. Sorry, I didn’t realize you weren’t a phone person.” She’s quick, _really_ quick, to assure him that she didn’t mean that at all, which makes him think that maybe she actually wants to stay on the phone with him, which, stupidly, makes him hesitant to say anything else because he’s afraid of making her change her mind. That kind of works out well for him though, because after a couple seconds of silence she goes on to tell him that while she has no problem actually talking on the phone, being the one to make phone calls stresses her out, a byproduct of her own anxiety. And _that_ he gets. Not the phone call thing specifically, because that’s never been an issue for him, but the anxiety, that part he knows more about than he would like to. He hadn’t realized, though, that it was something she struggled with. He knows she’s had a lot to deal with, emotionally and otherwise, for the past several months, expects, from what she’s been through and some of the things she’s told him about her own responses and reactions, that she’s probably dealt with depression, quite possibly even PTSD, but he didn’t realize she also struggled with anxiety. And the way she talks, so matter of fact and direct, makes it sound like it’s been a regular thing for her for a long time, not necessarily a result of the loss of her husband like the other conditions are. He hates that for her, the fact that she deals with that; he knows as well as anyone what a bitch anxiety can be. But he’s glad that he learned that about her.

He thinks he might have learned something else too, though he decides he needs more evidence to be sure. When she first started explaining to him why she’s not a fan of making phone calls, after his own several seconds of dumbfounded silence, she’d sounded hesitant, like she was nervous to let him into that part of herself. But he’d stayed quiet, and, maybe because of that, she’d gone on. He can’t be positive after this one time that the two things are connected, but he has a pretty strong feeling that they might be. He figures he’ll pay attention and listen for those quiet moments on her end from now on, and if all it takes for her to feel comfortable enough to open up sometimes is for him to keep his mouth shut, he can definitely do that.

He doesn’t keep his mouth shut about one thing though, which is that she should absolutely feel comfortable calling him any time she needs to tell him something, or talk to someone who isn’t a teenager, or just any time at all. She says a few things that he’s 99.9% sure are just meant to placate him, but she sounds happy that he offered, and she's the one who keeps them on the phone, asking him how he's been, how he enjoys being back at home after all those weeks in New Mexico, and he decides he's good with that for now. 

Chris tells himself he doesn't know why he sees Scott's smirking face and hears him calling him a ‘Disney princess’ when they get off the phone, but even he knows he’s full of shit.

***

_5 days later (mid-October, Year 1)_

By the next week, Chris is done pretending that he really does have only friendly feelings for her. He’d tried, mainly because he knows that what his mom said about her needing a friend is true, but the undeniable fact is that he _likes_ her. He likes her sweet, shy smile when she gets complimented or when she talks about something she’s proud of, he likes how passionately she feels about things, even if it takes a little while for her to be comfortable actually letting that passion show, he likes - and respects - how deeply she cares about people and how hard she works and fights for the people in her life, and he still can’t get over how strong she is in the face of everything she’s had to deal with. He also likes, selfishly, the way she makes him feel; he likes the way his heart sped up a little when she trained those bright blue eyes on him, wide and attentive, as he talked each time he was in Virginia, he likes the way there’s a certain vulnerability within her strength that makes him want to, not protect her, exactly, but cherish her, and he likes - loves - the warm, proud feeling that takes over his entire body when he manages to make her smile, or laugh, or blush.

The one thing he still doesn’t know is just how much of a problem this is for him, or, more importantly, for her. Because he can’t tell at the moment, sitting on his couch looking back through their text and Twitter conversations, whether it’s a simple crush, because she’s cute and sweet and something new in his life, or whether it really is like Scott had accused and he’s headed for something more serious. And because he knows he’ll never figure it out from hundreds of miles away from her, he needs to get back to Virginia, needs to see her again. (He _wants_ to see her again, too, just because he enjoys her company.) At least the timing of his little revelation is good, because he’s heading to D.C. in a couple days anyway, so that makes it a lot easier for him to come up with a plausible reason to travel that extra little bit of distance to be in her neighborhood. The reason is right there for him on a silver platter, too, because he knows that her kids’ first theatre competition is just under two weeks away, and while he’d never consider himself a theatre teacher - he’ll leave that one to her and to his big sister, thanks anyway - he does have a resume that says that he kinda knows what he’s doing, acting-wise, and so he thinks that offering himself up as a coach for a few days is an offer she’ll not only appreciate but accept.

She sounds frazzled and stressed when he calls, but it’s different, somehow, from those first couple times when she’d seemed anxious simply because she couldn’t sort out _why_ he was calling, and while he hates to hear that stress in her voice, he’s selfishly glad that the way she says _Hey mister_ when she picks up makes it sound like she’s at least happy to hear from him. He does feel a little bad for interrupting when she tells him that she’s still at rehearsal because her kids’ first competition is just over a week away - hence the stress in her voice - but it perfectly opens the door for him to jump right in and tell her his idea about coming down that weekend. (And when she gets all flustered at first and says, _Uhhhh, I really don’t mean this the way it’s going to sound, but … why?_ all he can do is laugh because he thinks it’s kinda fuckin’ adorable.) He tells her that he was thinking he could watch rehearsal and give the kids some pointers, then they could hang out a bit over the weekend. He doesn’t tell her that he’s really, really hoping that being in her presence again will tell him just how deep his extremely inconvenient feelings for her run.

She accepts his offer to help out with the play gratefully, almost giddily. He loves that, but he doesn’t love that she basically just skips over the part about them hanging out. He prods as much as he can without pushing and she hesitates for a second during which his stomach twists into a knot that would make a Boy Scout jealous and his heart beats too fast to be healthy. Finally, though, she says, _Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty open,_ and it’s not exactly _By the way, I think I’d like you to be my boyfriend_ , but then he had known better than to expect that. As it is, he’s going to spend the better part of a weekend with her, which is the best possible outcome he could have asked for, and he’s good with that.

***

_3 days later (mid-late October, Year 1)_

She had apologized no less than 37 times for not being able to pick him up from the airport, which is absolutely ridiculous because the reason she can’t pick him up is because she’s working and the whole point of the visit, the first part anyway, is to come see her _at work_. He’d met a couple discreet, seemingly trustworthy Uber drivers the previous times he’d been there and he’d managed to contact one of them directly to arrange a ride from the airport to the school (they’d done this whole thing where the driver was waiting at the airport when Chris’s plane landed and they’d actually been on the phone with one another when Chris requested the ride and the driver picked up the job less than a second later - it was ridiculous but worth it). Her school has a lot of doors, more than seems necessary or even safe, honestly, but one of them leads directly to the backstage area of the auditorium, which is convenient for him. They’re also all numbered, which is also convenient, since she was able to tell him exactly which door to come to and leave it propped open for him, saving him the ordeal of going through the main office.

The car pulls up to the appropriate door about 10 minutes after school has ended for the day. Another fortunate circumstance, since it means he’ll be able to maximize his time at rehearsal but also that the school has significantly fewer people in it than it did just 15 minutes ago. Chris hops out of the car with a hefty tip and the promise of a five-star rating, grabbing the backpack he’d managed to stuff two days’ worth of clothes into and slinging it over one shoulder. He thinks that the last time he was this excited might just have been when he found out he was going to get to be a part of the movie that brought her into his life, and that feels all too appropriate. 

He wasn’t actually aware, before now, that his mood could drop as quickly as it does when he walks through the door. Because the first thing he sees, his eyes drawn like a magnet, is her, her back to him and her arms thrown around an extremely tall, dark haired man with arms bigger than Chris’s, now that Captain America is a few years in his past. She’s pushed up onto her tip toes and still the man is bent a little at the waist to bring them practically cheek-to-cheek, his big, stupid arms encircling her back as he says words Chris can’t make out right next to her ear. What he can make out, clear as a bell, is her laugh. The thing is, he hadn’t expected this weekend to end with them being together. But he’d thought, before right that moment, that she wasn’t actually ready to be with anyone and that, maybe, once she was, she’d give him a chance to be that person. He knows he has no right to be angry; it’s not like she’s betraying him or being unfaithful, hell, she doesn’t even know how he feels about her. That knowledge does nothing to stop the jealousy churning in his gut, though. (He's not sure whether that's a point in the 'just a crush' column or the 'definitely more than a crush’ one.)

He’s still only a couple steps into the room from the small backstage hall the exterior door had put him in, not having moved since he spotted them, when suddenly the guy clocks him from across the room. His eyes lock on Chris and go wide as saucers. He starts to pull away from her, which gives Chris a sick sort of satisfaction, until he pats the back of her shoulder with one hand and says emphatically, his eyes still locked on Chris, “Mom. _Mom_.”

Shit. He is so fucking stupid. Because as he’s pulling away and Chris gets a better look at him, he realizes the guy is hardly a man at all. He looks to be 20, 21 maybe, definitely college aged. Which means that within the last few years, he was high school aged. Like all the kids she adopts. He looks more familiar with every passing second too, and now Chris realizes that he’s seen his fair share of pictures with the kid in them on her Twitter - a few different cast photos, sports teams and homecoming dress up days, he thinks he might even remember him from a show choir picture or two. And in case he didn’t feel like enough of an idiot, as they’re separating he sees that she’d been hugging the young man with her arms just hooked up under his and her hands resting on his shoulder blades rather than actually wrapped around him, just like she’d done the first time Chris had hugged her, the day they’d met (unlike the last couple times they'd hugged, when she'd gone all in with her arms wrapped fully around his neck). It also registers that he's in a room with a bunch of teenagers at the end of their school day, and they're _loud,_ which pretty reasonably explains the close talking during the hug. 

The younger man is still just kind of staring at him and he smiles back the best he can, hoping he hasn’t already made himself look like an absolute dick. She tilts her head back to look at the young man, and she must ask him something, because he raises his eyebrows and nods in Chris’s direction. She spins on her heel and her eyes and her smile both go wide when she sees him smiling back at her. She drops the hand that’s still on her kid’s back and almost runs across the room to where he still stands. “Hey,” he just manages to get out before her arms fly around his neck and she presses her cheek to his, and _Oh,_ he thinks, _that’s nice._ She starts to pull away almost as soon as his arms are around her and that’s not what he wants at all, so he squeezes her a little tighter, one arm wrapped around the middle of her back so that his hand lands on her ribs and the other across her shoulders, just for a second, just to make sure she knows that if she’s letting go on his account, it’s not necessary.

He doesn’t want to let her go, but he’s not going to do anything she doesn’t want, either, so he doesn't stop her when she goes to move again. When she does back away, though, just after he loosens his grip on her, she takes a step back and slides her hands down his arms to rest on his biceps, so he thinks maybe it’s okay to leave his on her waist, above her hips but well below even the sides of her breasts. There’s a pretty pink blush that spreads from her cheeks out to her ears and down her neck into the neck of her tshirt and she won’t quite look at him. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles, staring somewhere in the vicinity of their feet, “I just got really excited when I saw you.”

“Don’t apologize,” he scolds, and he’s trying so, so hard not to sound as giddy as he actually feels, “I’m really happy to see you too. And when have you ever known me to turn down a hug?” She lifts her head back up and she’s still blushing but she manages to make eye contact with him. He doesn’t realize until probably too late that his thumbs are brushing back and forth over her ribs. 

“Thanks,” she smiles up at him just before she lets her hands fall from his arms and starts to turn away. He shoves his hands into his pockets just so he’s not tempted to keep holding onto her. “Okay,” she breathes once her back is to him and she’s surveying the room, her former student standing right where she’d left him, talking to another young man, Ren, Chris thinks, the boy he’d met at the barbecue restaurant, and kids coming and going from the door on the opposite side of the room and the stage itself, “let’s rip the band-aid off, get you introduced, then while they’re getting in place and we’re getting the lights set I’ll introduce you to Brody, then we’ll get started.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he tells her as he follows her across the room to Ren and, apparently, Brody. The introduction to the cast goes better than expected, honestly. Some of them kind of freak out, as anticipated, but aside from a couple girls who look younger than the rest who don’t stop just sort of staring at him a little teary eyed, they all actually seem more excited about him being there to coach them than just the fact that he’s there and he’s him. He likes what that says about how seriously they take what they’re doing.

“And this is Brody, my first-born child,” she tells him once the cast and crew members have all scattered to do what they need to do to get the show going. 

Brody laughs and puts his hand out for Chris to shake and says, “Strong family resemblance, huh?’

Chris laughs then, because no, actually, there’s zero resemblance whatsoever, so even if she wasn’t a good five years too young for it to be possible for her to be his mother (10 years for it to be truly realistic), it would be a pretty hard sell. He nods though, and lowers his eyebrows in an expression of mock seriousness and says, “Definitely. Unmistakeable.”

“Haha, cute,” she says, rolling her eyes, “both of you. Brody graduated a couple years ago and was in my English class and in theatre for the first time my second year here at the school and he let me adopt him and mom the crap out of him for the remainder of his time.”

“Oh yeah,” Brody nodded and lifted one eyebrow high on his forehead, “I _let_ her feed me on the days that I had rehearsal and football practice and didn’t have time to go home in between, and I _let_ her write my college and scholarship recommendation letters and proofread all my essays, and I _let_ her give me adult or maternal advice when I couldn’t or didn’t want to talk to my actual parents. I made some big sacrifices, let me tell ya.”

Chris smiles as he watches her duck her head, blushing again. He hates to admit it, even to himself, but he’s glad to see that the whole ‘not being able to take compliments’ thing isn’t specific to him. “Oh yeah,” he says, playing along, “sounds like she was a real menace.”

“Look at that,” she deadpans, “I think they’re ready to start.” Brody laughs outright as she rolls her eyes and turns to look up and behind them at the kid in the lighting booth, who gives her a thumbs up. She nods back at him and he calls out a loud, _Lights down!_ before the house lights go off and they’re plunged into darkness except for a single overhead spotlight on center stage.

Rehearsal runs for around two hours, long enough for them to go through the entire show twice and for her, Brody, and Chris to give feedback each time. She doesn’t sit still while they’re actually performing, moving around the room to watch and listen from different places while Chris and Brody sit at a table set up in the center of the room. He knows he’s supposed to be watching the performance, but sometimes he can’t help but let his eyes drift over to her. She’s got a little notebook that she carries with her, taking notes throughout. And once, she goes to stand beside the door that he’d entered through, waiting there when one of her performers comes out almost hyperventilating because she’d forgotten the vast majority of her lines during the last scene. To start with, he’s intrigued that she knew to be waiting there, and it makes him really interested to see how the interaction is going to go. Either it’s some kind of rule that they have to meet her when they’ve had a rough time and made mistakes, or she just knows that the girl’s going to show up. The poor girl immediately drops her forehead to her teacher’s shoulder, and though he can’t hear any of what’s being said, he watches as she rubs her hands up and down the student’s arms and speaks quietly into her ear. A minute later the young lady lifts her head and offers up a watery smile and a nod then hugs her teacher quickly before disappearing back the way she’d come. He decides she must’ve just known the girl was going to be there looking for support.

“Is that how she always handles issues?” Chris asks Brody a few minutes later, once she’s at the back of the room again and that same young lady is back on stage, no trace of her previous tears, performing her next scene flawlessly, as far as Chris can tell. 

“Pretty much,” Brody says, leaning toward him a little and speaking quietly as they continue to watch the performance. “She doesn’t yell. Well, I mean she _does,_ but only because teenagers are loud and that’s how she gets our attention. She’ll just kind of go, _HEY!”_ he stage whispers a yell, “then once everyone has shut up and is looking at her it switches to, _Hi. Okay, so...”_ Brody takes on this high pitched, sugary sweet voice and Chris laughs then, hard, one hand reaching out for Brody’s shoulder and the other coming up to cover his mouth so that he doesn’t interrupt the kids on stage. “Seriously,” Brody goes on once he stops laughing, “I think her main priority is to love people and to make sure everyone knows that they are loved. Don’t get me wrong, she’s also an awesome teacher, academically, but if you ask her which is more important to her, I think if she’s being honest she’ll say that the ‘mom’ stuff is most important. Like that,” he nods toward the girl on stage. “So many people need things they aren’t getting from their own parents, you know, and she, well,” he breathes heavily, “she’s got a lot to offer, mom-wise.”

They go quiet for a second when all the action on stage stops, and they watch and listen as Ren delivers a short monologue, then when the pace picks up again Brody leans back toward him and says quietly, “Anyway, I think I’ve seen her mad, like actually angry, twice. The first time was musical rehearsal after spring break my junior year. We all basically screwed around and it was like none of us had never even seen the script before. About 30 minutes in she called us all off stage and calmly but in this voice none of us had ever heard before told us that we were wasting her time and each other’s time and that we needed to have more respect for what we were doing. She told us to go home, figure out what we’d already figured out before the break, and that if we didn’t show up the next day with our crap together, we shouldn’t show up at all. She never raised her voice or anything, but I can tell you, as we were leaving, we were all terrified.”

She’s moved toward the front of the room by then, on their left, and Chris is watching her as Brody talks. That assertive, forceful side of her is hard to imagine, but he can’t say he dislikes it, that he doesn’t appreciate the balance of the two different sides of her. “What was the second time?” Chris asked, his eyes still on her. Brody sighs and Chris feels him squirming a little in the seat next to him and he wonders if he’s hit some kind of nerve.

Brody clears his throat quietly and sinks down into his chair a bit, his previously perfect posture giving way. “The second time was me and a few of my friends being dicks, basically, just being totally disrespectful to her and two of my closest girl friends.” Chris only just met the kid, but he can tell how she feels about him, and he trusts her judgement in people, and he finds it hard to believe that someone who she cares so much about could be that awful. He also, though, knows what he was like at that age, and thinks he probably shouldn’t judge the guy too harshly. “The school does this male beauty pageant thing as a fundraiser for the senior carnival. Formal wear, interview questions, talent, the whole thing. It’s meant to be funny, but it’s also meant to look like a real pageant, if that makes sense,” Chris nods when Brody looks over at him then the younger man goes on. “My senior year was the first time it had been done since like, the 90s, and the senior class sponsor is supposed to be in charge of it, but I’m pretty sure if she walked in here right now and wanted to turn on the house lights she wouldn’t be able to find the switch. So she definitely doesn’t really know anything about not only the technical stuff like lights and sound but how to put on a production of any kind at all. Me and my friends Julie and Erin, who were going to emcee and also teach us some basic choreography for the opening number, suggested she ask Mom for help, because, well,” he doesn’t finish his sentence, but he makes a sweeping gesture around the room with one arm and Chris nods.

“So she asked Mom for help with lights, and she said yes, of course, because she basically never says no if someone asks her for help, and Mom ended up taking the basic outline of what the senior sponsor planned to include and essentially taking control of the whole thing. Well, we show up to the practice run the night before the actual competition, me and the other seven guys in the pageant, the senior sponsor, Julie and Erin, and Mom.” He stops for a second, huffs, and shakes his head. “So the sponsor is just kind of here while Mom is trying to get us to actually walk through the competition itself, like a real rehearsal, and Julie and Erin are trying to teach us the dance and get us to give them all the bio information and quotes and stuff that we were already supposed to have given them, and basically we’re just all totally screwing around. Like yeah, it was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t supposed to be a complete joke, if that makes sense?” He looks over at Chris and Chris nods again. “At one point the sponsor looked at us and said something like, ‘You guys are ridiculous. I can’t wait to see you make complete fools of yourselves tomorrow night,’ which was fair. We totally deserved that. But Mom wasn’t having it. She refused to let us look like morons, unless that’s what we were going for. I mean, my ‘talent’ was the Napoleon Dynamite dance, wig and everything, so it really was what some of us were going for.” Chris covers his mouth as he laughs at that so as not to disturb the performers on stage.

“Anyway, I could tell she was getting more and more frustrated, so were the girls. And I knew we were being jerks. I just couldn’t, or didn’t, stop myself. None of us ever like, said anything explicitly rude _to_ them or anything, but we just weren’t listening and we were goofing around and making their jobs way harder than they should have been and completely disregarding the fact that they were there, volunteering, giving up their like, Tuesday night, or whatever it was, to help us out. When we finally finished at almost 10 pm, which is freaking ridiculous, I know that, especially for Mom, since she had literally been here since like 6:30 that morning, I was looking for her, to ask for help with something, of course, and I asked Erin where she was and Erin looked at me like I had three heads or something and said, ‘She left. She’s done with you fools.’ That’s when I realized just how bad it was. Not only had she never left something without saying goodbye before, she’s always the last person out of any room.”

Chris can see Brody out of the corner of his eye as he looks forward at the stage, and he can tell the young man is looking at her, looking contrite and remorseful even these few years later. “How long was she mad? Did she call you out on it the next day?”

“Nope,” Brody shakes his head and pops the ‘p’ at the end of the word. “A couple of the other guys, who were also her kids, went and apologized during her planning period the next day, told her they knew they’d been jerks and that she was mad at them. She told them that they had been jerks, that we all had, and that she was disappointed because she knew we were better people than that, but that she forgave them. I was really embarrassed and didn’t have the balls to go apologize. It’s just, she’s not someone you want to let down, you know? But right before the pageant started, once she’d gotten us all lined up behind the curtain and asked if there was anything we needed, I thanked her for everything she’d done, and the other guys all kind of agreed and piled on, and she just said ‘You’re welcome,’ and hugged me and told us all good luck then went off to run lights and sound. She never said anything else about it.”

“Huh,” was all Chris could manage. He felt like he’d learned a lot in those past few minutes. And he’s certain that all of it - her dedication to both her job and to the people in her life, the fact that she can hold people accountable without letting anger take over, the way she loves fiercely and without holding grudges - goes in the ‘definitely more than a crush’ column.

The kids finish their first run-through of the show and Chris and Brody look at each other a little abashed when they both seem to realize at the same moment that she has much, much more to say about the performance than they do because they were talking to each other more than watching the show. They seem to come to a non-verbal agreement that they’ll both do better next time, because Chris squares his chair up to the table more closely and sits up straighter and Brody reaches under it to pull a composition book and a couple pens out of a tote bag that he assumes is hers, ripping a few sheets of paper out of the notebook and passing them and one of the pens across the surface of the table to Chris. They don’t say a word to each other that isn’t directly about the show, and the look she gives him when he goes over his two pages of notes at the end, big blue eyes wide and soft, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as the corners of her mouth curl up into a gentle grin, her arms kind of wrapped around herself in an easy hug with each hand holding the opposite bicep, makes him consider suggesting a third run-through just so he can get that look again.

“You know that you just completely made their collective lives, right?” she says later, once all the kids and Brody are gone and it’s just the two of them, cleaning up.

“Eh,” he says, deflecting, “I didn’t do that much.” She keeps trying to compliment him or thank him or whatever, and that’s not what he wants. He’s really glad he was able to, hopefully, help out her and the kids and he’s actually really excited to hear how things go at their competition next weekend, but now that rehearsal is over he doesn’t want to draw more attention than necessary to that part of the trip, because he doesn’t want her to think that he’s there as some sort of community service. He’s there for her, and while he knows he shouldn’t say that to her just yet, he also doesn’t want to lead her into believing otherwise. She says something about him showing up being even more exciting for the kids than Brody being there, and he latches onto that to change the subject, knowing, or at least strongly suspecting, that it’s a subject she’ll be happy to switch to. “He seems like a good kid. What’s his story?” he asks, and smiles to himself when her face kind of lights up.

“He’s pretty fantastic,” she starts, then goes on to tell him things he’d mostly already figured out through her Twitter or from his and Brody’s conversation earlier. But then, as they’re sitting on the front edge of the stage, she leans toward him until she bumps his shoulder with hers, the first time she’s ever initiated physical contact aside from those two hugs she’d given him recently, which he chalks up to sudden bursts of emotion on her part, and a spark of electricity shoots through him as she says, “Basically, he’s you, just 20 years younger.” And his stomach flips then, because yeah, on the one hand, this is her _kid_ she’s comparing to him, which isn’t ideal, but it’s also someone she holds in insanely high regard, which is nothing to complain about, he decides. (And besides, if she’s talking about her ‘first-born child’ and saying he’s just like Chris, and saying it as a good thing, then maybe that means she’d want- well, no, he can’t let his brain go there because it’s far too early to even think about that.)

He makes a couple jokes at his own expense to make sure he doesn’t accidentally react in a way that would make his current dilemma all too obvious, but she makes it damn near impossible for him when she says _You know people love you. And it’s well deserved._ He just kind of looks at her for longer than is probably wise, trying to sort out whether she truly means ‘people’ in the broad, general sense, or whether it’s more than that, but she looks away and seems almost uncomfortable under his scrutiny, so he changes the subject back to Brody, asking yet another question that he already knows the answer to.

They leave soon after to head to some festival that he’d heard her kids talking about, and on the way out he gets his first real glimpse of her as a fan, if you don’t count the stuff in her classroom, when she calls him _Captain America_ then squeals and actually bounces up and down a couple times when he throws a salute her way. It would be a turn-off if that were a regular thing, for sure (trust him, he’s dealt with that before and it got old quick), but as a one-off moment it not only strokes his ego a little, it’s also too fuckin’ cute.

The festival is basically in the school’s backyard, so they walk over and head straight for the performance stage, where her school’s band is just starting to perform. They’re actually pretty good, and he enjoys the way she lights up a little every time a kid spots her in the crowd and waves or gives her a little head nod. He also enjoys that it’s crowded enough that he has a good excuse to stand close enough to her to smell her shampoo, something light and fresh. He rests his hand on the small of her back and gives it a second to see if she’s going to flinch, or step away, and when she doesn’t, he leans down to speak right into her ear, “They’re really good.”

She practically beams at him when she looks up over her shoulder and says, “Right?”

He steps even closer then, out of necessity, when a man carrying a squirming toddler walks by them, and when she still doesn’t make any move to pull away, he doesn’t either. He stays like that, his hand on the small of her back and his arm running up the length of it, wondering how she might react if he slid his hand around to her hip and pulled her into his side, until the band switches from the more intense music they’d been playing to songs he recognizes as football game sideline standards and she looks up at him and asks cheerfully, “Food?”

“Sure!” he grins down at her, because yeah, he could eat, and he takes the hand that had been on her back and holds it out in front of himself, crooked at the elbow. She rolls her eyes when he says, “Lead the way, ma’am,” but she also smiles and slips her hand over his forearm. 

He teases her later about the fact that he’s in the terrible disguise of a baseball cap and her school hoodie and yet the handful of people who run up to them while they’re eating, arms outstretched and words coming a mile a minute, are all for her. He also tells her though, and means it, that he thinks it’s a good thing that so many of her former students are so happy to see her. More than that, every single one tells her at least one story of some way that something she’d taught them was helping them in college, or laments that they miss her guidance and mentorship now that they are away. She makes a positive impact on people, changes their lives for the better - another point in the ‘more than a crush’ column.

She warns him later, as she’s handing him a beer from her fridge (she’d insisted that he stay with her for the weekend, and he’d put up the standard protests of _no really, I don’t want to impose_ , but really, he loved the idea of seeing her in her own home, and not putting on a show like she’d literally done when they filmed the movie scene together, but relaxing, interacting with her dog, just _being_ ) that she usually gets up ‘early-ish’ on Saturdays and takes Millie to a nearby trail to get in a few miles. She’s in the middle of telling him that she can fix him breakfast before she goes, or he can have cereal, or she’ll just skip it if he wants her to, when he finally manages to get her to stop talking so he can tell her that he’d love to go with her, if it’s okay with her. He didn’t exactly pack workout clothes, but he’d brought basketball shorts to wear before bed and in the morning, and he can wear the tshirt he’d worn that day to avoid getting any of his other clothes dirty. He’s a little worried he might be imposing on time she likes spending alone, but her smile is big and bright and she nods like a bobblehead when she tells him it would be great to have his company. 

When he comes out of her guest room the next morning she’s standing between the dining room and the living room with the tv on Good Morning America, dressed in calf-length workout leggings and an oversized tshirt, eating half an English muffin with peanut butter over a napkin. “Hi,” she grins at him as he shuffles down the hall, one hand scrubbing through his sleep-mussed hair.

“So you’re a morning person?” he asks her as Millie sniffs at his legs and he bends to scratch between the dog’s ears. 

She shrugs. “Not especially. I just like to get the stuff I _have_ to do taken care of in the morning so it’s not looming over me all day.”

“And you _have_ to go do five miles every Saturday morning?” She shrugs again and her face says maybe there’s a story there, but he doesn’t want to push. And besides, he doesn’t know her all that well yet, even though he kinda feels like they’ve known each other forever, so maybe she’s like, in some kind of fitness challenge or something.

About a mile into the five mile loop he teases that she definitely undersold the difficulty of the trail. “‘Not a hike,’ she said,” he says up toward the treetops, “‘definitely not a hike, just a walk.’” And he _is_ teasing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also a little tougher than she’d made it out to be, or that _she’s_ not tougher than she gave herself credit for when talking about it. He sees the way she and Millie bound up the hills, and it’s impressive.

“It’s not!” she protests, hands on hips and leash looped over one wrist as Millie sniffs around the underbrush. “The trail is hard-packed and well maintained, there are minimal tree roots and obstacles, and all the hills are completely manageable without any kind of assistance from ropes or walking sticks or anything else. They’ve even built stairs into the bigger ones, which still aren’t really _that_ big.”

He grins at her and lifts one eyebrow. “So those are your criteria for what makes something a hike?”

She shrugs then tugs a little on Millie’s leash and the two of them start walking again so all he can do is take a couple quick steps to catch up so he can walk at her side. “Honestly?” She looks up at him and wrinkles her nose. “I really have no idea what actually makes something a hike or not, I just feel like a brat, or like I’m giving myself too much credit if I say, ‘Oh, I go for a five-mile hike every Saturday.’”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you _should_ give yourself some credit.” They’ve gotten to a long wooden bridge over a lake and he stops to take in the view. It’s really nice, especially in the mid-morning sunlight, with the leaves all just starting to change color. She stops too, right next to him, and leans into her forearms where she rests them on the bridge railing. “Call it a walk, call it a hike, call it whatever you want, it’s no walk in the park, for a walk in the park,” he nudges her with his elbow and wiggles his eyebrows when she looks up at him, scoffing and shaking her head at his terrible joke. “Hey,” he says, turning to lean back against the railing and look out over the other side of the lake, “it’s really pretty out here. You should let me get a picture of you and Miss Millie.”

“What?”

“Yeah, your Twitter is full of pictures of her, you need more of the two of you.”

She scoffs again, more of a snicker, really, and says, “Oh, you’re one to talk about dog pictures on Twitter.” 

“Fair,” he laughs, “but I’m in at least half of them.”

“Yeah, well, Millie doesn’t exactly do selfies, unless I want a black and white blur and to be attacked by her tongue.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m here, isn’t it?” He winks before he thinks about it, but she just chuckles and drops her head before he has a chance to freak out about it. “C’mon, get down there,” he urges as she starts to pull her phone from the little pocket at the side of her thigh, “you’ve got a few feet on her and I don’t think she’s coming up to you.” He smirks as he holds his hand out for the phone. 

“Yeah yeah, smart ass,” she mumbles, but she hands over her phone and goes down on one knee to hug Millie close and he can tell she’s trying really damn hard not to smile at his snark, but she’s failing.

The thing is, he meant what he said about her needing to get some pictures of herself with Millie, but as he snaps one picture after another, the first few good, the next several ridiculous as Millie tries to lick all over her face and they both fall over onto the wooden planks of the bridge, he realizes that he also just really likes the idea of seeing her post more pictures of herself (ones where she isn’t surrounded by kids, captioned by how amazing _they_ are). Yeah, he selfishly wants to be able to see more pictures of her when he’s not there in Virginia with her, but he also wants to see her feel good enough about herself to post those pictures. He’s definitely figured out over the past few months that it’s not just that she doesn’t take compliments well, it’s that she really, truly doesn’t give herself enough credit for the person she is. She’s told him she has anxiety, and he’s sure that losing her husband in the horrible way she did messed with her heart and her head in ways that no one should have to deal with. He can’t help but wonder if there’s more going on there too, but he figures if there is, and if they ever get to a point where she wants him to know, she’ll tell him. (And if they ever do get to a point where they’re more than they are now, he may give her a gentle nudge, encouragement, really, to share some of that weight he's pretty sure she's been carrying around in her heart.)

They end up spending a big chunk of the day outside, even after their hike-that-isn’t-a-hike, and it makes him think about how different autumn is in the south or the mid-Atlantic or _whatever_ Virginia is from New England autumns. Sure, the beach that she takes him to for another walk (much less intense this time, really just a stroll along the seawall) is pretty, and it’s really nice that it’s warm enough to be out there but not so hot that he’s sweating his balls off, but still. As they’re walking he thinks about how much he wants to share _his_ autumn with her, the colors on the trees so much brighter, more vibrant, the air crisper and with a chill that just might lead to her tucking herself against him to share some of his warmth. He starts to picture her, in those same skinny jeans she’s wearing now and a big, cozy sweater - preferably one of his, if he’s being honest - curled up in one of the Adirondacks on his back deck with a fire going in the fire pit, her hands curled around a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and a box of apple cider donuts from Carver Hill between them. He likes the image. A lot. He also gets a little too caught up in it, because she’s looking up at him with a curious, amused expression on her face, apparently waiting for him to say … _something._ “Sorry,” he tells her with a grimace, “got distracted.” His eyes scan the horizon and fix on a cargo ship in the distance, “The boats,” he says lamely, pointing like an idiot with one hand.

She doesn’t seem to notice that his brain has leaked out of his ears, which he’s grateful for, because he doesn’t think that _Sorry, I got distracted thinking about taking you home with me to show you what a real autumn looks like and imagining you getting cozy in my backyard wearing my clothes_ is the best way to broach the subject of him having feelings for her. He breathes a sigh of relief when she just nods and says, “Oh, yeah. That’s pretty common here.”

They finish off their day at a brewery that’s not five minutes from her house. The beer’s good and it’s karaoke night, which is hilarious, but mostly he’s just really, really enjoying her company and reminding himself every 10 minutes that it’s not a date. And then, fuck his life, because just as they’re in the middle of a very intense discussion about whether or not it would be completely insane for him to go sing karaoke (he’s had just enough to drink that he thinks just maybe he can get away with it) a middle aged woman with her phone clutched to her chest walks right up to them and quietly says, “I’m so sorry to interrupt your date -”

“You’re absolutely fine, what can we do for you?” he answers without thinking _at all._

Turns out she’s got a kid out back, in the lawn area of the brewery playing outdoor games with a friend, and she asks very politely if he’ll take a picture with her son. He looks across the table at his friend, because if there’s any hint of her being uncomfortable he’ll take a polite pass on the photo request, but she just smiles and shrugs like she’s game for whatever. He loves that, and as they’re walking out to meet the kid after Chris suggests that they go to him instead of vice versa, he thinks that the evidence in the _definitely more than a crush_ column is piling up so high as to be pretty much insurmountable at this point.

He takes some pictures with the boys, signs a Captain America phone case, and shortly after, he’s paying the tab for his three beers and her one and they’re heading back to her house. They’re sitting at the one stoplight between the brewery and her house when she says, “You were really good back there with those kids.”

He can’t help but smile when he tells her, “I like meeting kids. There’s something pure about it. It makes me feel good about what I do.”

She shakes her head and he can see the movement but not her expression in the dark car. “Yeah, it’s not just kids, though.”

“What do you mean?” His brow furrows.

“I mean -” her voice trails off for a second and she makes a sound that could be either a laugh or a scoff, he’s not sure which. “I’m convinced every person who meets you walks away a little bit in love with you.”

He goes still then, watching her closely in the fleeting light from the streetlamps as she rolls through the stoplight and picks up speed. It’s the second time in as many days that she’s said something like that. Does she … does she mean ‘every person’ like, _Hey, you played a beloved superhero in the movies for almost 10 years and you’re also basically a decent guy, so people tend to like you,_ or does the fact that she’s repeating the sentiment mean that she’s implying more than that? Something more specific, more personal? He knows what he _hopes_ she means, but he also knows better than to think that way, so finally he just says, “I don’t know about that.”

They get to her house and the first thing she does when they walk in the door is pick up the remote to turn on college football and he wonders if she might actually be trying to kill him with just how awesome she is. She pulls herself out of the corner of her soft, cushy, really freaking comfortable couch when the buzzer signals the end of the third quarter and she practically skips to the kitchen and, god, how is she so fucking _cute?_ She’s back just a couple seconds later - it’s a small house and the kitchen is only somewhat separated from the living room by a partial wall - with an open beer in each hand. She reaches to hand him one with her right and lifts the left to bring her own bottle to her lips, where the light from the lamp in the corner of the room catches on the diamonds in her wedding ring set.

“Hey,” he says carefully as she’s tucking herself back into her corner of the couch, “back there, when that woman called you my date, I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine,” she tells him, but it doesn’t _feel_ fine, because she stares down at her beer as she says it rather than looking him in the eye.

“I know we could have corrected her, but it just seemed like it would be easier to see what she wanted and move on. The thing is,” he shakes his head, “I’m used to that sort of thing. I haven’t actually dated half the people I’m rumored to have been with. I guess I just … _forgot_ that it wasn’t a normal thing for you. I should have been more considerate.” It’s all completely true, so he doesn’t think he needs to mention the part where he’d been thinking, before the woman showed up, about how he kind of wished it actually was a date.

“It really is okay.” She’s still quiet, but she manages to make eye contact with him, so he’s a bit more inclined to believe her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She smiles a little shyly then unfolds her left leg from where it’s tucked under her and reaches it to press her toes against his thigh. He wishes more than anything that he could take back the look of surprise that comes across his face, because the second it does, a look of panic takes over her own. He swats at her foot with the pillow he’s kept tucked into his side, hoping she’ll take him playing along as reassurance that she has no reason to freak out. And she doesn’t freak out, exactly, but she does pull her leg back far too quickly for his liking. She turns her attention back to the tv then, watching the game intently even though nothing is really happening. 

He’s not exactly encouraged by her reaction, but the fact that her first instinct, an instinct she hadn’t suppressed, had been to create physical contact between them has to be a decent sign, right? He doesn’t think it means that she feels the way he does, but it’s enough to give him hope that maybe his feelings aren’t the most problematic thing in the world. He waits until the next time-out then just kind of goes for it. “Hey, can I ask you a personal question?”

“Um, okay.” She sounds hesitant but not angry, or scared, so he goes on.

She’s not looking at him, but he turns to angle his body more toward her anyway, his back pressed against the arm of the couch. He’s picking at the label on his beer just because his hands need something to do. “And if it’s too personal, feel free to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business.”

She finally turns just her head to look at him, “Go ahead.”

“ _Have_ you dated at all? Since,” he weighs his next words very carefully and finally settles on, “your husband?”

At first she just lowers her eyes from his and shakes her head and he’s afraid he’s gone too far, but then after just a couple seconds of waiting her out she says, “I don’t know what’s a ‘normal’ or ‘appropriate’ amount of time to wait after you lose your spouse, I just know that I’m not there yet.” 

“It’s been,” he does some quick math in his head, “nine, 10 months?”

She nods. “Honestly, even if I was ready, I don’t even know where I’d begin. Like … online dating. I don’t have anything against the concept. And I know people who’ve done it and found people who make them incredibly happy. But I don’t think it would work for me. I feel like I need … a friend. Someone I already know and have a bond or a connection with. I know this sounds _super_ corny, but there’s something almost, I don’t know, _sacred_ to me about having that bond, that person you know and trust and already care about, and then taking it farther, deepening that connection. So I guess, if and when I do date again, I’d want it to happen that way. With a friend.” 

She’s so thoughtful as she speaks, like this is something that really means a lot to her. And he gets it. Really. In fact he’s a little taken aback by just how much he does get it. He has to shake himself back to reality when she asks him, “You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” he tells her as he looks her dead in the eyes and sends up a little prayer-thought-thing that she gets what he’s really saying when he says, “I do.”

“I’m sorry,” she shakes her head at herself, “I sound so stupid and, and romantic.”

He rushes to reassure her. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

She laughs and he can tell it’s forced. “But I mean, my only guy friends are either gay, or not _really_ my friends at all, just the husbands of my friends.” He feels like the worst kind of selfish asshole for being happy to hear that. “And you,” she waves a hand in his direction and shrugs in a way that he’s more than 100% sure doesn’t mean _And you … are perfect for me,_ and now he feels even worse because the happiness is gone and all that’s left is the selfish part. “So yeah. I don’t think I’ll be dating any time soon.”

He can tell she’s waiting for him to say _something,_ but he knows that anything he says right then is either going to give him away or come out all kinds of wrong and make him seem like a complete dick, so he just gives her a quick nod accompanied by an eyebrow twitch. She still looks like she expected more of a response, but the game’s back on, so she turns her attention back to the tv. She watches the game and he watches her as a defender from her alma mater completes a pick-six that clinches the game for her team, prompting her to fly up off the couch and jump up and down yelling at the tv. He still feels awkward about before, but not so much that he can’t be completely amused and charmed by the display. 

He teases her about how animated she is and he thinks they’re getting back on solid footing when she says, “Oh, you should see me during Kentucky basketball.” And just like that he’s back in the land of thoughts-he-shouldn’t-be-having, the primary one being the urge to tell her that if that’s an invitation, he’ll happily be right back on that couch in a couple months. He watches her, again hoping for any sign that she knows what she’s saying, how her words are affecting him, but she really seems to have no clue. He waits until the game’s over then tells her he’s going to head to bed. He catches her when she tries to discreetly look at her watch - it wasn’t late at all for a Saturday night - so he tells her he’s got family dinner the next night and wants to be well-rested. And he probably will end up at his mom’s, because the alternative is eating something that he cooks, and he’s never crazy about that option, but it won’t be anything formal or meticulously planned like he kind of implies to her that it’s going to be. He hates to mislead her, but he just really needs to get away from her before he says something he really shouldn’t and ruins their friendship. Because if that’s all she’s ready to offer right now, he doesn’t want to jeopardize that.

They have a short back-and-forth about breakfast and how he’s going to get to the airport in the morning - he insists that she doesn’t have to do anything for him, but she’s not taking no for an answer. She makes a joke that includes the words ‘love language,’ and before he thinks about what he’s doing his hand comes up to curl around the back of her arm. He forces himself to laugh because if he doesn’t he’s going to do something really stupid, like kiss her. 

He’s just about to let go of her and make a beeline to the guest room when her hand lands on his shoulder, soft and tentative and warm. “Hey, thank you.” He just kind of blinks back at her. “I’ve had a really, really good weekend. So thank you.” 

He sighs then, because he really is a selfish fucking meatball. He’d wanted to spend the weekend with her so he could figure out just what kind of feelings he has for her. He knows now without a doubt that this is not a crush. She’s kind but strong-willed. She’s gentle but passionate. She loves deeply and fiercely and with her whole heart, and when she cares about something she throws herself into it with an almost reckless abandon. And she’s probably the least self-serving person he’s ever known. She’s exactly what he wants. But he’s not what she needs, not like that, not right now. So he gives himself a mental kick in the ass and resolves that he’s going to stop thinking about himself and be what she _does_ need. He hugs her, because she looks like she could really use that, and says, “I had a good weekend too. A great weekend.” He lets his thumb drift up and down over her spine as he pulls away to smile down at her. “G’night.”

“Night,” she answers, and he goes off to lay in her guest bed and stare up at the ceiling in the dark, thinking about how he's got to keep himself in check, because she needs him to be her friend, and if that's all he ever gets to be, he thinks he can live with that, but he would never forgive himself if he lost her altogether because he pulled some dumb shit like make a move on her out of nowhere or drive her away and make her think he doesn’t want her friendship because he can't just _be_ around her without losing his cool. Besides, if he does manage to keep it together, maybe one day, when she's ready for a friendship to turn into more, she’ll take him out of that untouchable box she seems to have put him in, up on the high shelf next to her gay friends and her friends’ husbands.

***


	4. Maybe Someday We Could be Friends; Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221453/chapters/48136351

_ 1 Week Later (end of October, Year 1) _

He kind of hates to admit it, but Chris is definitely one of those people who has his phone on him always. Like, he’s had to be reminded to take it out of his pocket during filming before because it made a visible outline and wasn’t appropriate for his character or the story. It’s not even really about having to be connected all the time, it’s really just that his job often comes with short but intense bursts of work followed by long periods of standing around, and Twitter and the news and game apps like  _ Words With Friends  _ and  _ Boggle  _ are great ways to pass the time (and he’s been on a streak of kicking Scott’s ass at both, and a few others, for several weeks now). The vast majority of the time it’s on silent, do not disturb, even. 

But that Saturday evening, as he sits in his house watching college football that he’s only mildly invested in and nursing a beer that it’s probably too early for, especially considering he’s alone, he has the ringer volume turned all the way up and the vibration turned on and his phone pinned down to one thigh with his hand. He knows she’s not huge on making phone calls, but she’s got to call him once their competition is over. She has to. He’d gone to their rehearsal, and yeah, he’d been a little preoccupied at first, but in the end he’d ended up getting really into the show and giving some really well thought-out feedback, and over the week since, she’s been sending him updates and videos of the kids incorporating his notes. Sure, he’d had a bit of an ulterior motive when he’d gone down there the previous weekend, but he’s actually gotten really invested in the kids and their show. So surely she’s going to call him when she knows something.

He jumps when the phone rings, buzzing between his leg and his palm, and he forces himself to take a deep breath before answering. “Well well,” he says when he does, slipping into teasing mode to try to keep things light, “ _ you _ calling  _ me _ ? Don’t I feel special.”

“Hey, I’m capable of making phone calls,” she answers with just enough of an edge to her voice that he knows she’s being sarcastic and teasing him back. 

“Mm-hmm, well, _ now  _ I believe that.” It’s quiet for a second and he’s torn between thinking she’s doing it on purpose, waiting him out to make him sweat, and worrying that things are getting awkward, that he took the teasing too far. He decides to just bite the bullet and ask. If she’s holding out just to give him a hard time, he’ll give her the win. If she’s feeling awkward, he’ll cut the tension and move them past it. “Soo, how’s your day?” 

“Oh, it’s fine,” she tells him in a tone of what is clearly forced nonchalance.

“Fine?” He’s almost snippy, and he doesn’t even really feel bad about it.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well?” He’s getting impatient and he has no doubt she can hear it.

“Well?” 

He doesn’t mean to raise his voice, but really, she knows exactly what she’s doing. “Well, how did our kids do?” He doesn’t know when he stood up, and he realizes that the hand holding his beer has kind of been waving around, so he checks the floor around him for splatters and sets the bottle on the end table.

“Oh. That.” She goes quiet for so long that he worries the call was dropped. Finally, “First place!”

It’s a good thing he got rid of the beer, because he gives an involuntary fist pump when he yells, “Hell yeah!”

“And I got a best actor award!” he hears from somewhere in the background.

“Is that Ren?” He hadn’t realized she was still with the kids, or within their earshot, but he doesn’t mind. And he’s super excited for the kid, he’s really talented and Chris especially likes the way he seems to take care of his ‘mom.’

“Yeah,” she giggles, and he realizes it’s maybe the first time he’s ever heard it like that, not sarcastic or self-deprecating or nervous or awkward, just purely happy. He likes it, and he wants to hear more of it, and he really, really wants to know what it would feel like to be the one to cause it.

“Fuckin’ right, he did.” And he hears a lot more laughter than just hers. He drops his voice, “Oh shit, am I on speakerphone?”

He hears a slight change in the background tone then and he realizes that yeah, he was definitely on speakerphone. He hadn’t picked up on it before, but there had definitely been that kind of background hum and that echo-y quality, like she was talking to him from inside a tunnel. “You were. I’m sorry, I thought it would be fun for them to hear your reaction when I told you. I probably shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that.”

“No, it’s okay. It was cute. I just feel bad about the language.”

“Pssht, they’ve heard worse.”

He grins at that. “Surely not from you,” he goads. He wouldn’t have believed it, actually, after the first time they met. But then that second time, when it was just the two of them in her classroom, once she’d gotten comfortable she’d let loose and her language had been, well, colorful at times. He wasn’t complaining! No, he definitely has a tendency to do the same thing (sometimes the words just slip out without him even thinking about it), so if anything he’d been relieved to discover that he didn’t have to worry about offending her with his own crass language. Spending the previous weekend with her had shown him that not only was she comfortable with harsh language, but that she could also be pretty creative with her words when she wanted to be. It was fun, actually, and he’d caught himself using a couple of her more interesting insults over the past week or so.

“On occasion. Not that I’m proud of it, but sometimes things slip.” She sounded contrite at first, then a little more snarky and defiant as she went on. “And sometimes, I just really have to make a point. I’m a very emotional person, you know.”

He thought about her gushing about her kids, about her letting loose at her house and letting him comfort her, about her animation as she watched her alma mater pull out a win over an in-conference rival. “I do know.”

She laughs again, and it’s so close to exactly what he wants. “Okay, I don’t know how long I can reasonably expect them to stay quiet. I should probably go. I just wanted to share the good news.”

“Alright,” he looks down at his socked feet scuffing over the area rug. He really doesn’t want to stop talking to her, but he gets it. “Hey, call me when you get home,” his free hand comes up to rub at the back of his neck. “If you want.”

“Okay. I probably will.” He doesn’t fully believe her, he’s encouraged her to call before and she hasn’t, but her voice is soft and sweet when she says it and he’s even pretty sure she’s smiling, so he’s going to count the conversation as a win anyway.

***

_ 2 weeks later (mid-November, Year 1) _

He debated himself for almost two weeks after the election before finally deciding that inviting her to go to the inauguration wouldn’t be the stupidest thing he’d ever done. Finally he figures that the worst thing that could happen is that she says no, and since he knows exactly how happy, how relieved, she was thanks to the outcome, it’s a risk he’s willing to take. He makes all the arrangements before he invites her, just because he knows how quickly good hotel rooms are going to go and he doesn’t want to rush her into making a decision if she needs some time to think it over. He decides, after a lot of agonizing inside his own head, that it’s less presumptuous of him to just get one big, two-bedroom suite rather than two separate hotel rooms - it’ll still give her space of her own, but since it is technically just one room, it doesn’t seem like he’s assuming she’ll say yes - and if having just one room is the only thing holding her back he’ll see what he can do about getting another one.

He texts her at first, so that she can process and respond in her own time, but when she texts him back almost immediately, he calls her, too excited to wait. He’s still not going to pressure her for an answer, but he just wants to hear her voice. So he taps ‘Call’ on her name in his contact list and as soon as she answers he blurts out, “You wanna come to D.C. with me?”

The call is short, but she agrees almost right away, and he hadn’t expected it to be that simple, but he’s really, really happy that she says yes. And that she sounds so excited about it.

***

_ 1 ½ weeks later (Thanksgiving, Year 1) _

The last thing she says before they hang up the video call that he made (with a little four-legged assist from his best bubba) is a promise to call him if she gets bored or lonely over the long weekend. He’s not going to hold his breath; he’d suggested the same thing to her in the past and she never actually called him, aside from that one time after the theatre competition, but he does like the way she nods and says  _ Promise,  _ like she wants to make him happy. And even if she doesn’t take him up on it this time, or even the next time or the one after that, he’ll keep offering, making sure she knows that he’s there, that she won’t be bothering him, if she needs him.

“She’s lovely,” his mom says from over his shoulder as he hinges forward at the waist to drop his phone onto the coffee table.

“Hmm?” He looks up at her where she stands behind the couch.

“Your friend,” she nods toward the table and starts to make her way around the end table to sit with him on the couch, “she seems sweet, and funny. Very pretty, too. She’s got a great smile.”

So first of all, he hadn’t realized his mom had been in earshot, certainly not in the sight line of his phone. She had to have been off at an angle, because she wasn’t visible in the little mirror image of himself he could see as they talked. And secondly, well, there was no secondly, really. His mom was right, on all counts. “Yeah,” he nods, watching as one thumbnail picks at an invisible spot on his pants, just above his knee, “she is. And she does.”

“Her little one?” his mom asks, curiosity without judgement.

He shakes his head. “She’s spending the holiday with friends. Apparently she’s on toddler duty while they work on dinner.”

“Well,” she curls her hand around his forearm, as much as she can, over his sweater, “she seemed good with him.” Her thumb rubs over his wrist and he cuts his eyes to the side to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “Christopher.” He hums noncommittally and she sighs heavily through her nose and tightens her grip on his arm.

He groans then and drops his head back, scrubbing his hands over his face before dropping them to his lap, his head still lolling on the couch cushions. They haven’t talked about this since DisneyLand, but he knows exactly what she’s asking without actually asking. “Fuck. Yeah.” He finally turns to look at her and she’s just kind of smiling over at him sympathetically. “How bad is this?” he asks, and he feels a bit like an idiot, but also, he’s been asking himself that same question for over a month now, and she’s his mom, and she’s always had the answers. 

Her smile goes a little sad as she tells him, “I think that’s a question for you, not me.”

“Jesus, I. Honestly, I don’t know.” He pushes himself forward to prop his elbows on his knees and drop his head until he’s looking straight down between his feet. “She’s great, and I, I figured it was a crush, you know? Because she’s new and different and not part of my normal circus and, fuck. I know she’s a person, okay? Not a, a toy or whatever.” His mom rubs his back soothingly and as the words keep spilling out of him he wishes he’d done this sooner. “Anyway, it’s not. A crush. Because she’s smart and funny and cares about things and people as much as I do. She’s sarcastic and sweet and strong.”

“And beautiful,” his mom adds, and her smile is almost a smirk when he looks over at her, making his cheeks and the tips of his ears burn just a little. “And good with kids.”

“And those things,” he agrees. “I just, I don’t think it’s good timing, you know? For her. And so I don’t know if I should say something to her, or just -”

“Do you want some advice?”

“God yes. Please.”

She laughs as she rubs her hand between his shoulder blades and he finally sits back again. “Well first let me ask you a question.” He turns to look at her with one eyebrow raised. “If you tell her, and she’s not ready for that, or if she just doesn’t feel that way about you for whatever reason, what changes?” He furrows his brow like he’s confused by her question, because he is. “Are you going to want to stop being friends with her if she doesn’t want more than that?”

“No,” he says emphatically, shaking his head. “Of course not.”

“So for you, nothing changes.”

“I mean, it wouldn’t feel great to hear, but no, I guess not.”

“Okay, good.” She nods thoughtfully. “But what changes for her?”

He opens his mouth to answer that nothing would need to change for her either, then stops, thinking for a second. “I guess it would make her feel awkward. Probably, knowing her, even a little guilty, for turning me down, hurting my feelings.”

“Yeah, awkward and guilty sound about right.” She leans forward and hangs her hand off the front of the couch, snapping her fingers until Dodger comes running, stopping in front of her and flopping onto his back to happily accept the belly rubs she’s offering. Chris knows there’s more coming. Eventually she sits back up. “You’ve made it sound like she’s the kind of person who doesn’t like to depend on other people, feels like she needs to be strong for everyone around her?” It shouldn’t be a question, but she says it as one, so he nods. That’s exactly the kind of person she is. “But she seems to sort of let that go with you.” Again, not really a question, but again he nods anyway. “So if you tell her you have these romantic feelings for her, and she doesn’t, or can’t, reciprocate, what happens to the one friendship she has where she feels like she can let her guard down, be vulnerable?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he’s basically sputtering at this point, “I would make it clear to her that I still want to be friends, no matter what.”

“I know you would try to do that.” She pats the back of his hand placatingly. “But you have to think about this from her perspective. She trusts you, clearly, and you don’t want to take that away from her.” He opens his mouth to protest again but she cuts him off. “You and I both know that you have no expectations, that there are no strings attached to your friendship. But you and I have never been through what she’s been through, and we can’t presume to know what that loss, that pain, has done to her heart. What if you telling her that you have romantic feelings for her makes her worry that your whole friendship has been based on trying to get more? If you spring this on her, and it’s not something she’s ready for, she may not feel like she can continue the friendship, may not feel like it’s what she’s believed it to be up to this point. So if she  _ needs  _ to know, if you think it’s going to make any difference other than to make her worry about your friendship, then by all means, tell her. But only if she needs to know.”

Chris draws in a deep breath, holds it, puffs his cheeks out with it. He wishes she was wrong, wishes he could convince his mom, and himself, that he’ll always be able to preserve the friendship no matter what, that he can make her understand that he only wants to make her happy, even if that means he doesn’t get exactly what he wants. But he knows his mom has a point. She always has a point. He blows all the air out of his lungs. He feels his mom comb his hair over his ear with her fingertips and he might as well be six, curled up on her lap begging her not to make him go to school. 

“I know your heart’s in the right place,” she tells him, her hand resting on his shoulder, “it always is. But right now, you have to be what she needs. Then maybe, down the road, once your friendship has helped her grow and heal and get closer to being that woman she was before she had her heart shattered, you’ll get to be what you want. Or at least tell her what you want, without the fear of your friendship becoming collateral damage.”

He reaches across his chest to lift her hand off his shoulder and brings it to his lips to kiss the back of it before bringing it down to his lap and cradling it between both of his own. “Love you, Ma.”

“I love you too sweetheart.”

They sit in amiable silence for a few minutes, watching as Dodger turns his Thanksgiving headband into a chew toy in front of the muted parade on the tv. Eventually she speaks up again. “Of the four of you, yours is the heart I’ve always worried about the most.”

He scoffs, “Because I can’t get my shit together?”

“No,” she shakes her head a little solemnly, “your brother has always given you a run for your money in that department. I should’ve known, gay, straight, or in between, that the girls would have a leg up in the functional relationship department.”

“Yeah yeah,” he rolls his eyes.

“No, I worry about your heart because, well, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And they don’t come any bigger than yours.” Chris looks down at their hands, watching her thumb rub over his knuckles. “You just haven’t found someone yet who’s able to carry the weight of it, to protect it, when it falls. And,” she squeezes his hand and waits until he looks up at her, “maybe that’s her. I hope it is, because she really does seem lovely, from what I know about her, and it’s very, very clear how much you want it to be her. But before you can expect her to hold your heart, you have to make sure that hers is whole, and ready for you.”

He doesn’t have the heart to tell his mother that his is already falling, plummeting mid-air. 

_ *** _

_ 1 ½ weeks later (early December, Year 1) _

Chris watches her as she stands at the door to the bus, hugging each of her kids as they get on, and he’s so, so glad he came. Like the last time, a big part of his motivation had just been spending the time with her, but also like the last time, even more so, actually, he was really invested in what was going on with the kids. After that first competition and his first foray into ‘coaching,’ he’d made it a point to ask her at least once or twice a week how things were going. He’d gotten the feeling at first that she thought he was just doing it to be polite or whatever, but over time he’d managed to convince her that he was actually sincere, that he really did care. So then when he called her a few days after Thanksgiving and threw out the idea of coming down to go with her to the state championship, she’d done the whole  _ You don’t have to do that  _ routine, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to be there, for the kids and for her (and to see if he could figure out an answer to the questions his mom had planted in his mind), and he was pretty sure she wanted him there, so he’d started making travel plans before they were even off the phone.

He honestly doesn’t even know how she’s still standing by that point, ushering the kids onto the bus. He knows for a fact that she couldn’t have slept more than a couple hours, because she was still awake when he drifted off on the couch, her laptop between the two of them displaying one 90s music video after another, and then she was in the other room almost completely ready to go by the time he got up. Then she hadn’t stopped going all day, conducting basically a full rehearsal on the bus on the way to the competition, buzzing around putting out one fire after another while the kids got ready to perform, practically vibrating out of her chair while they performed and again as they sat through the verbal critiques and awards, and finally corralling all the kids and their belongings - like herding cats - and single-handedly putting their borrowed classroom back in order because she apparently didn’t trust anyone else to do it properly. He and Brody stand back, watching her have her moment with every student, and when the last one has disappeared into the darkness of the bus he claps Brody on the back of his shoulder and the younger man smiles down at him then steps forward to bend a little at the waist and wrap her up in the biggest hug yet before taking off across the parking lot to his own car.

She waits for Chris, but he insists that she go first. He’s sure it looks like he’s being chivalrous, but really he’s just afraid she won’t make it up the steps on her own. Seriously, that's how tired she has to be. At least if he’s behind her, he can catch her if she falls. (And, oh, how he means that in every possible sense.) He follows her to the second seat back, opposite the driver, and practically collapses into the seat as she slides in much more gracefully, not even sitting, just turning around to face the kids and propping one knee up on the seat. She lets the kids chatter until they’re moving and back on a main road, then she calls out to get their attention and makes a lovely, heartfelt,  _ I’m so proud of you and honored to be your teacher  _ speech that would have Steve Rogers taking notes. Finally, she turns back around, drops into the seat next to him, and lets out a long, heavy breath. He watches her whole body deflate with the exhale and he can all but see everything that was keeping her together - nerves, adrenaline, love - float off into the night. 

“Tired?” he asks, and she doesn’t even say anything, just looks up at him with a tiny smile and the heaviest eyelids he’s ever seen and nods. “Yeah,” he laughs a little, “I’d say so. I think you can sleep now, it’s not like they can go anywhere. And I can pretend to be an adult if necessary,” he smirks then frowns a little when she shakes her head.

“No, I’ll be okay.”

“Yeah?” She nods. “Tell that to your eyelids.” She tries to glare at him, but he just laughs when she yawns then huffs through her nose when she manages to close her mouth. “Fine, how about this, you don’t have to  _ try  _ to go to sleep, but don’t force yourself to stay awake either. You certainly don’t need to worry about keeping me entertained.”

She puts up a completely ineffectual fight for a couple minutes longer, but she can’t seem to get through a single sentence without yawning or tripping over her words, shaking her head to try to get herself together. She sounds drunk, honestly. He pulls his phone out of his pocket at one point, holding up one finger in a signal for her to give him a minute and pretends to respond to an email that he’d answered two days earlier. By the time he closes out the email and goes to put his phone away she’s slumped down in the seat, leaning away from him so that her head rests against the glass of the window. Good. Well, almost good.

“Hey,” he says quietly, dropping his head to speak just next to her ear and reaching across to her opposite shoulder, “c’mere. You’re gonna regret that later.” He pulls on her shoulder gently until she shifts her weight, curling toward him and dropping her head to his shoulder. 

“You sure?” she asks, her voice quiet and heavy with fatigue.

“Positive,” he answers, shifting his own body a little farther down into the seat and stretching his legs out into the empty aisle to his left. He lets her get comfortable and when she’s mostly stopped moving he reaches across her to drop his arm heavy over her lap and rest his hand carefully and safely on the outside of her knee. If she asks, he’ll say he wanted to keep her steady as the bus bumps and rocks along the interstate. She doesn’t ask. In fact, she doesn’t move again at all until he uses that same hand to shake her awake as they pull into the school parking lot, two and a half hours later.

He tells her before they even get off the bus that there’s no way he’s letting her drive home, and he expects a fight but she just rolls her eyes and digs her keys out of her bag. He waits in the car, letting the heater warm up, as she sees the kids into their cars and talks to a few parents. She’s more alert on the short drive to her house, but he still tells her as he follows her in that he’ll be fine on his own if she wants to head straight to bed. It’s not all that late just yet, and he’s certainly not as tired as she is, but he always carries a book with him when he travels, so he can keep himself occupied if she's done for the night. She insists, though, that her nap on the bus had been just the thing she’d needed, and he doesn’t know that just over two hours of what couldn’t have been great sleep can make up for how exhausted she must have been, but she certainly seems more awake, and she definitely seems like she doesn’t  _ want  _ to go to bed yet, and, well,  _ he  _ doesn’t want to miss an opportunity to spend time with her, so finally he grins and asks her about Christmas movies.

He very nearly tells her how crazy he is about her when she pulls out one of those zippered disk binder deals full of nearly every Christmas movie he watches with his own family every year, and then some that he doesn’t. He keeps his cool, though, and watches her face rather than the DVDs flipping by as she goes through the binder. When he sees the way she bites back a giggle when she gets to  _ National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation  _ he pins his index finger to the disk and says, “This one. I love this one.”

And he does, it’s a classic. But that doesn’t stop him from watching her more than the movie, and when they get to the end and she grins over at him to talk about how the film never loses its charm, he just smiles back and agrees. Then she invites him to watch another and starts talking about how she wishes his visit didn’t have to be so short, and something twists in his gut. His mom’s words from Thanksgiving have been running through his head since he walked into rehearsal the previous day and saw her there fretting over her kids. He knows his mom was right, has known since the words came out of her mouth; it’s not fair to tell her that he has romantic feelings for her if there’s no chance of her feeling the same way and all it’s going to do is make it so that she can no longer feel the same way about their friendship.

What he doesn’t know is if that’s actually the case - the part about there being no chance of her feeling the same way, that is. He’d been pretty sure, up until that visit, that he shouldn’t tell her, not yet anyway, because he hadn’t experienced anything so far to make him believe that her position on dating had changed since the last time he was there a couple months earlier. But then he’d spent the previous night with her in her kitchen, helping her cook then clean up their mess, and more than once she’d told him how happy she was to have him there and that being around him made her feel happy, like herself again. And after they’d both fallen asleep on her couch, her pillow pressed into his side, he’d awoken when she stirred sometime later, causing his hand to fall from where it had (all too comfortably) settled on her arm as they slept, and he turned away from her, still feigning sleep so that she could slip away to bed without awkwardness or guilt, but all she did was move her pillow to the other end of the couch and settle back in. There had been instances that day too, like when she’d all but launched herself into his arms when her kids were named state champions, and the way she’d let him tuck her against him on the bus.

He’s not positive that all that means anything other than that she’s gotten more comfortable in their friendship. But he’s also not positive anymore that it doesn’t, that, as his mom had said, she doesn’t need to know. Because the thing is, his mom had cautioned him against saying anything if all it was going to do was endanger the friendship. But he’s starting to worry that the friendship will be in danger if he  _ doesn’t  _ say anything. Because while he is still absolutely positive that he will be nothing but her friend forever, and do it happily (if with a slight pang in his heart), if that’s what she wants and needs from him, he’s not positive that he’s not going to say or do something stupid, something that will make her uncomfortable, push her away, if he  _ doesn’t _ tell her how he feels. He’s never been good at hiding his feelings, containing his heart.

He realizes two fundamental truths at the exact same time - his mom was right, he shouldn’t tell her if she doesn’t need to know, and also, she  _ does  _ need to know. Because while telling her is taking a risk that the friendship will suffer, not telling her is almost a guarantee that he’s going to screw something up because he’s trying so hard to hide it. And if she’s not there, romantically, if that means he has to work overtime afterward to assure her that their friendship can continue being exactly what it has been, exactly what she needs, that’s what he’ll do. He just can’t not be honest with her.

“Hey, um,” he starts, almost stuttering as he pushes himself all the way to the front of the couch, almost like he’s preparing for a quick exit. “I uh, I wanted to talk to you about something. Before I head back.”

She shifts, turning so that she’s facing him completely with her back to the arm of the couch and her legs crossed in front of her. She looks so nervous that he almost considers backing out. Almost. “Okay. Go ahead.”

He makes sure to hold her gaze as he goes on, because this next part may actually be the most important part out of all of it. “I need you to know, everything I’m about to say - I have no expectations, and we don’t ever need to talk about it again. I love this,” he waves a hand between them, “and I don’t want it to change. Well, not …” he trails off, because yeah, actually, he really fucking does want it to change, but only if that’s what she wants, and that’s not the point right now. He shakes his head and goes on. “Anyway, I just think you have a right to know.” And then, because he doesn’t want her to think this is about obligation in any way, “I want you to know.”

She looked nervous before. Now he’s a little surprised that he can’t physically see her shaking as she nods back at him, that’s how scared she looks. Maybe that’s why she keeps twisting her hands into her top the way she is, so he won’t see. He wishes there was any better way to do this, wishes he was capable of doing it without making her feel this way. But he’s nervous too, because there are so many ways he can fuck this up and he just really really doesn’t want to, and he’s just trying to be careful. So he clears his throat and stares down at his hands on his knees and says, “Okay. Well, the last time I was here, we talked about you dating, and you said you’d want to date someone who was a friend first. And you mentioned me as if I wasn’t an option, like I was” his mouth goes a little dry as he searches for the right word, one that won’t make him sound arrogant, or just generally douchey, finally settling on, “unattainable, or-or out of reach.” He stops, trying to watch her out of his periphery to see if she reacts, if he failed at finding a word that doesn’t make him seem like the world’s biggest dick, but she’s completely still, and the only thing he knows to do is go on. “I just wanted to say that I’m not. Unattainable, I mean. For you,” he stammers like an idiot. He turns then to look fully at her, just for a second, but right when he does she’s smoothing her hands down her thighs to her knees and his gaze lands on the rings on her left hand and as quickly as possible he’s bringing his eyes back to his own hands. “I know you’re not ready to date right now and I know that’s not how you see me. But you should know that, if that changes, I’m very much within your reach.”

He’s still for a few seconds, and when she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move except to keep running her hands over her legs, he pushes himself off the couch, anxiety making his hands clench into tight fists that he has to keep telling himself to release.

Finally she says, her voice small and scared and a little broken-sounding, “Chris, I - I’m not - not yet-”

He puts on the best approximation of a smile that he can manage, and it’s small, and probably a little sad-looking, but it’s  _ real.  _ It’s real because she didn’t say  _ no,  _ and she didn’t say  _ not you,  _ she said  _ not  _ **_yet_ ** _.  _ That ‘yet’ is a very big three-letter word. He knows it’s not a promise of anything, and she’s not asking him to wait for her (though he will, he’ll wait until she tells him to stop waiting, good or bad), but it’s enough to make him think he might have at least a little reason for hope. He cuts her off, hoping his quickness will ease her mind, “No, I know. And I respect that. 100%. And like I said, I don’t want anything to change. I mean, I know I may have just made things really awkward, but I hope we can get past that because the last thing I want is for either of us to lose this friendship.” She doesn’t say anything, but she nods, and it looks like the kind of nod that means  _ we’re on the same page, that’s what I want too. _

He doesn’t want to leave her there alone. In fact, he wants to wrap his arms around her and promise that everything’s going to be okay, it’s going to be just fine and nothing’s going to change and he’s going to go on being that friend who lets her let go, lets her put down all that weight she carries for everyone else, lets her just  _ be  _ and feel normal again. But he’s afraid that him hovering, taking up all her space, is only making things harder for her. So he mumbles, “But um, I do think I’m going to head to bed. I’d really like it if we could have breakfast and coffee together in the morning. I’m not asking you to cook for me,” he says much more quickly, more clearly. “I saw a box of Cheerios on the counter. I can tear up some Cheerios.” He smiles then because she’s starting to look a little panicked. “And if you feel like it, it’d be great if you’d take me to the airport. But if you don’t want to do either, and you just want to stay in bed until I’m out of your house and your hair, I respect that and I’ll get a taxi or an Uber, no problem.”

He slaps his open palms on his thighs and manages a small smile in her direction then turns away from her to move toward the hall that will take him to the guest room. He stops abruptly at the sound of her voice, tiny and scared, behind him, “Chris.” He turns in time to see her pushing herself off the couch. She rolls her eyes and he thinks she looks like she might be about to cry and god, he hates himself just a little bit, because he’s pretty sure he’s done the exact thing his mom warned him not to do. But then she says, “Can I have a hug before you go to bed?” and relief washes over him. He can do a hug. He’d  _ love  _ to do a hug. 

His smile widens as he opens his arms to her. “God, of course.” He wraps his arms around her and drops his chin to the top of her head when she comes closer. He holds her close with one arm around her shoulders and runs the other lightly up and down her back. She’s never really hugged him back so  _ deliberately  _ before, with her arms so tight around his waist that her hands rest just below his ribs on opposite sides, and he can’t help but think about how right she feels there.

Her voice is muffled when she speaks right into his chest without pulling back, “You know -”

He cuts her off, shaking his head. “Don’t. We don’t need to talk about it, remember?” She nods like she’s been scolded and he drops his cheek to the top of her head as he holds her a little tighter for a second. His instinct is to kiss her hair, and he’s given probably hundreds of friendly kisses in his day (twice as many if you count Downey), but those only work because he actually doesn’t have feelings for the kiss recipient. It’s one thing to kiss the cheek of an assistant or manager for helping him out, or a co-star with whom he’s being reunited after weeks or months apart. In those cases, the kisses really are exactly what they appear to be, physical displays of platonic affection or appreciation or joy. In this case it would be, well, it would potentially be an atomic bomb to their friendship, because they would both know just how not ‘friendly’ it was. He gives himself one more second to hold her then says, quietly, “G’night,” and slides his hands across her back and down her arms, giving Millie a quick scratch between the ears where she watches intently from her chair, then heads off to bed.

_ *** _

_ 3 days later (mid-December, Year 1) _

He’s back home for two days before they have contact again. And that communication gap isn’t super unusual, though they had started talking - either verbally or via text - more and more frequently, especially since Thanksgiving. It gives him anxiety though, because he can’t tell if it’s just their normal rhythm or if it’s because he left things awkwardly and uncertainly. She had gotten up to have breakfast with him, which had been reassuring, at least. In fact, she was already up, showered, dressed, and flitting around the kitchen, when he shuffled out of her guest room. Breakfast was punctuated by awkward, stilted small talk but at least they were talking. And when she dropped him off after the short drive to the airport, she thanked him for being there, for being part of a great weekend, just like she had the last time. He couldn’t help but feel a little guilty at that, like he didn’t deserve it. He accepted it though, and just squeezed her hand on top of the gear shift before getting out of the car.

Since then he’s thought it best to let her call the shots. It’s not some game he’s playing, and if he still hasn’t heard from her by, say, the end of the week, he’ll check in. He just wants to give her space, in case that’s what she needs from him right now. Of course, he’s also a little afraid that giving her that space will just drive home any fears she may have that he only wants her if he can have her romantically, but he thinks he can fix that more easily with a phone call a few days down the road than he could fix her thinking he’s smothering her, being pushy or trying to force something to happen. 

He’s scooping food into Dodger’s bowl on Tuesday evening when his phone vibrates against his thigh. He digs his phone out of his pocket and the notification tells him it’s a text from her, and his heart leaps into his throat. He’s a little ashamed to admit that when he opens the text and sees the handful of pictures, his first feeling is disappointment that she isn’t in any of them. “ _ We couldn’t have done it without you!”  _ the message reads, accompanied by several pictures of the cast and crew of the show posing on stage with their trophy and medals. As his mind is still in the process of switching gears from  _ I wish I could see her face  _ to  _ At least she’s talking to me,  _ the second text comes through. “ _ I couldn’t have done it without you. I couldn’t have done a lot of things without you,”  _ she's written, and the first thing that happens is a little lump forms in his throat, because those are definitely not the words of someone who has just had an important friendship destroyed by him. The second thing is that he texts back, because those are the words of someone who never gives herself nearly enough credit.

He answers, “ _ Sure you could’ve. You’re stronger than you think you are.”  _ He’s not even completely sure what ‘things’ she’s referring to - filming for the movie, starting to become more ‘normal,’ the stuff with the kids and the play - but his answer stands nonetheless.

He laughs when her response comes back right away. “ _ Thanks, but I was talking about finishing off that batch of waffles I made the other day. NO WAY I was eating all those on my own.”  _

_ So that’s how we’re doing this,  _ he thinks,  _ straight to teasing.  _ He smirks as his thumbs fly over the phone’s screen. He can do this all day. “ _ Oh, I see, you only want me for my stomach.”  _ He waits a minute, and when she doesn’t respond he worries that he’d accidentally crossed a line. Now that he’s looking at the words on the screen, he can see how she might have taken them in a way that was very different from what he meant, and the last thing he wants is for her to think he’s trying to pressure or guilt her into something. It takes him just a second to come up with something that will effectively diffuse any romantic or sexual tension that she could possibly think he was trying to create.  _ How was your day? Mine started with Dodger throwing up on my pillow, so beat that.  _

A handful of seconds later he finally gets that picture he was hoping for. Sort of. She sends him a selfie, her eyes wide and her brows furrowed, cheeks puffed out and one hand clamped over her mouth, all the hallmarks of someone trying to look completely disgusted. He laughs and makes his way over to drop onto the couch, phone in hand. He’s hoping to keep this conversation going as long as possible. 

_ *** _

_ 2 ½ weeks later (Christmas, Year 1) _

Chris is standing over his mom’s kitchen sink finishing off the Oreos the kids had left out for Santa when his phone starts to buzz on the counter next to the coffee maker at just after six a.m. His first thought is that he’s going to kill Scott if he ended up drinking last night and is hungover, or worse yet, still drunk. It would be fairly surprising behavior, for Christmas Eve night, but it also wouldn’t be unheard of. (Though, the last time he’d pulled a stunt like that, this Dirty Santa Pub Crawl some of their high school buddies had insisted on going to, had been several years earlier and Chris may or may not have been the instigator of the bad behavior.) His face lights up when he opens his phone without actually checking the notification only to be greeted by Cousin Eddie, in gif form, wishing him a merry Christmas as he drains his RV septic tank into the drainage ditch outside the Griswold family home. She’s tacked on her own " _ Merry Christmas"  _ as well. He loves everything about it, from the fact that she’s the first person he’s actually communicating with on Christmas morning to the way she chose to acknowledge the day. (Because, if she’s sending him  _ Christmas Vacation  _ gifs, then she can’t have any lingering negative associations between him and the movie and the night they’d watched it together, right?)

" _ You’re up early _ ," he shoots back, because it doesn’t really require any thought and he just wants to say something fast.

He’s making his way back to the living room to sit by the lighted tree when he gets " _ So are you. Please tell me I didn’t wake you."  _ He barely even thinks before tapping the little green ‘call’ button next to her name. He’s the only one awake, and he kind of can’t think of anything he’d rather do at the moment than talk to her while surrounded by peace and quiet and all things Christmas. 

They chat for a couple minutes about what their respective days are going to look like, and with each word she says he realizes more and more that she sounds off. “Are you sick?” he finally asks her. “You sound hoarse.”

“No, I’m fine. Just trying to be quiet,” she says, and he gets this little thrill in his stomach like he used to get in middle school or high school, sneaking around to talk to the girl he liked without anyone else knowing, so they couldn’t tease him.

“Uh-oh. Don’t want your mom to know you’re talking to a boy?” He draws out the words and makes his voice purposely taunting. He means it in that same way he’d felt when he was younger, really does want to know if she’s trying to hide a crush on him, but he needs to mask that, at least a little.

There’s been a lot of that, over the past couple weeks. It’s been tricky, this dance of not wanting to make her uncomfortable by seeming pushy, or flirting too obviously, while also acknowledging the fact that she knows how he feels about her, so it would really just be disingenuous to try to hide it completely. Sometimes he realizes mid-sentence that he’s going too far and has to pull some kind of (really bad) word judo to get things back on track. Sometimes he even finds himself censoring things he would have said before, but knows he probably shouldn’t say now. He’d called her sweetheart, for example, a few times before, in a teasing, almost sarcastic sort of way. He doesn’t feel like he should do that anymore, though, so he holds back.

“Yeah, something like that,” she says, and for just a second he wonders if there’s something she’s not saying. She goes on quickly though, adding, “She’s still sleeping. The house is really small and the walls are thin, I don’t want to wake her,” and he tries not to be too disappointed that it’s not actually about him. He offers to let her go, if them talking is causing a problem, but she says she’s good, and it sounds like she really means it, so he settles back into the couch cushions and props his feet up on the coffee table. 

They talk until his mom comes into the living room carrying a cup of the coffee he’d made earlier and sits in the chair on the other side of the room. He knows she wouldn’t say anything if they kept talking, but he also knows it’s only a matter of time before the place starts to fill up, so he gets off the phone with promise to talk again soon with updates on how the kids liked the gifts he’d gotten them, including the books she’d suggested. 

“I’m glad to hear the friendship seems to still be going strong,” his mom says when he puts the phone down. As soon as he’d gotten back home from his last visit, he’d told her about the conversation they’d had. She hadn’t told him that he’d done the right thing, but she also hadn’t scolded him, and she did tell him that she understood why he did it and that she knew his heart was in the right place with his need to be honest. “I’m a little surprised you called her so early on Christmas morning, though,” she says, and he knows without a doubt that she’s fishing.

“I didn’t. Well, I  _ did,  _ but only after she texted.”

His mom raises an eyebrow. “Oh. Well.” There’s been a lot of that lately, comments and looks that tell him that she’s in on the secret. He only wishes someone would let  _ him  _ in on it, because as far as he knows they’re still just friends and he’s still just tap dancing around saying or doing something stupid. 

“She’s back in Kentucky and, I don’t know, she hasn’t said anything specific, but I feel like it’s hard on her being there.” He shrugs, “Maybe it’s because that’s where her husband’s family is. And she doesn’t really have any friends there anymore, I don’t think, not like she has in Virginia.” 

“Hm. I thought she didn’t have great friendships in Virginia.”

“No, she has, I mean.” He groans a little and rolls his eyes, “She has friends there and people she likes to spend time with. I just think, with most of them, she feels this need to hide her vulnerabilities or anything she sees as a weakness. She likes to take care of people, not the other way around.”

“I can understand that,” his mom nods and takes another sip of the coffee she still cradles in both hands. “That makes it that much better that she’s still comfortable letting you be that person.” She’s got her eyebrows raised so that he knows there’s more simmering under that statement. He wants to tell her nothing’s changed, insist it’s friendship with no immediate hope of anything more, beg her not to get his hopes up.

Instead he says, “I’m just trying to keep being what she needs me to be.”

_ *** _

_ 2 weeks later (early January, Year 2) _

He’s had notifications turned on for both of her Twitter accounts for several weeks now, so he’s alerted as soon as she shares a tweet she was tagged in with a comment of her own on her private account. She’s written “ _You caught me on a good balance day! Also, I’ve got a kick-ass instructor to thank for my skills.”_ and the original tweet states _“@AshCarolR_ _says this is her least favorite combo. BITCH WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE? A word of advice, don't sneak up on this girl in a dark alley, she's Beauty AND a Beast._ _💪🥊_ _”_ with a video. 

He wants to watch the video, but his first thought is one of near-fury when he sees from the original poster’s profile picture that said poster is a man - Stephen, if the username is anything to go by. He’s a man who posted a tweet calling her a bitch. Chris clenches his jaw and breathes heavily through his nose and focuses on his phone through all the red he’s seeing. But then he looks back at her comment and it registers that she doesn’t seem the least bit offended. In fact, her comment could be interpreted as flirty, if you really wanted it to be (or if, in his case, you really  _ didn’t  _ want it to be). And that, combined with the fact that  _ Stephen _ also calls her a ‘beauty’ makes his anger step aside to make room for an equal dose of jealousy. Because unlike the last time he’d (stupidly) thought there was something for him to be jealous over, she knows how he feels about her, and if she actually is flirting with this Stephen guy, that means she’s open to that, just not with him.

He taps on Stephen's display name and before the man’s timeline has even fully loaded, Chris, once again, feels like an idiot. The header tells him a lot more than the profile picture - one of Stephen in workout clothes on a stage wearing a headset microphone - did. It’s a wedding picture, and Stephen is one of the grooms. If he knows anything, it’s that flirting is like breathing between gay men and their straight female friends, and that ‘bitch’ is a term of endearment at least 50% of the time.

Now that he can see straight again and is back to breathing normally, he watches the video that Stephen posted. He’s kind of blown away, honestly. It’s a video of her in the front row of a group fitness class. The thing is, she’d told him at some point that she took these kickboxing based fitness classes. But she’d very clearly played down both the intensity of the class and her own skill level. He shouldn’t be surprised by that, really, at this point, but still. She’d made it sound like the class was something for people with no coordination and little stamina, just some light aerobics-level cardio, and she certainly hadn’t told him that she was really, really good. Seriously. The video shows her doing this series of punches, knee blocks, and kicks, all in different directions, and he can’t help but think that she wouldn’t look totally out of place in an early training session for one of his movies. 

He also can’t help but notice her legs. He’s seen her in skirts and shorts before, but none quite this short, and not like this, where his eyes are drawn to not only the smooth, creamy skin that he may have noticed a time or two or ten before, but also to the taut, lean but defined muscles underneath, fully on display with each kick, each lift of a knee. Her shoulders are, well, those are nice too, and he actually hadn’t seen those before, since this is the first time, with her workout top’s high neckline and thin spaghetti straps over a sports bra, that he’s seen her in less than short sleeves. In both cases, his first thought is that she looks strong, fit, but it’s quickly followed by the thought that she looks  _ good.  _ His feelings for her have never been about the way she looks, though he’s always found her attractive, but as he watches the video for the third time, his fingers itch with a desire to trail his fingertips from her ankle to her knee then up over the smooth skin and tight muscles of her thigh, right to the hem of those shorts she’s wearing. His hands ache to curl around those shoulders, thumbs tracing over her collarbones as he draws her close enough to claim her mouth with his. 

_ Fuck.  _ He closes Twitter then closes out of his phone altogether and puts it facedown on the coffee table and calls for Dodger. He needs a walk.

He intentionally leaves his phone behind while they walk nearly three miles in the cold on his relatively quiet street. By the time they get back, he’s more or less cleared his brain of inappropriate thoughts and screwed his head back on straight. He goes to the kitchen to get water for both himself and Dodger then goes back to his phone. He’d gotten a couple texts, which he scrolls through, determining none of them are time sensitive, before re-opening Twitter. He scrolls through his timeline for a minute, just to make sure he hadn’t missed any political stupidity while he was out - you’d think, with just a week and a half until the inauguration, that everything would be pretty much on autopilot by that point, but he’d learned over the past four years that there was no such thing as ‘normal’ anymore - then goes back to her profile. Her quote tweet of Stephen’s video is still at the top of her timeline, and he taps the ‘Share’ button to direct message it to her with a comment he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving publicly.  _ “Holy shit.” _ he types, smirking as he does.  _ “You’re really good at that! Remind me never to piss you off.”  _ Once he’s hit ‘Send’ and he’s dropped back on her timeline, he clicks on Stephen’s original tweet. He resists the temptation to play the video again, because he knows he’ll just get sucked into an endless loop, and clicks ‘Retweet with Comment.’ 

> _ “I love this.  
>  _ _ This lady is one of the kindest, gentlest, most caring people I know. She can also, clearly, kick your ass.  
>  _ _ Just let this be a reminder, never mistake someone’s kindness for weakness.” _

He grins to himself as he’s typing it. He has just a second’s hesitation before posting it, nagged by a hint of worry that he’s opening a can of worms or overstepping some boundary by sharing it to his literal millions of followers, but ultimately he decides that it’s not all that different from some of the other congratulatory tweets he’s posted when he’s seen posts about people doing good things. And since Stephen had tagged her private account, not her public one, no one who wasn’t already on her approved followers list would be able to trace it back to her account to see her profile or anything she’s posted. His only actual regret after posting is that he won’t be able to see her face when she sees his tweet or his DM.

It’s not even 10 minutes later when his phone alerts him that he’s got an email. He almost doesn’t open the message because he doesn’t recognize the name at first, but he looks a second longer at the .edu email address and the ‘b’ at the beginning and it clicks. He’d given Brody his personal email address back in December at the final theatre competition. They’d gotten to talking before the performance about what Brody wanted to do after graduating college, and Brody had admitted that while he was a commerce major, he couldn’t shake his lingering interest in arts and entertainment and would be over the moon to find a career that let him be a part of both - it’s why he’d made the unorthodox choice, for a commerce major, of picking up a theatre minor. Chris had told him then that if he had any interest in interning with an agency or talent or business management company that summer, Chris definitely had connections and Brody should get in touch if he wanted Chris to put in a good word for him anywhere. (He was also thinking that he might just be able to steer him instead toward spending his summer working with ASP - the kid was smart and dedicated and principled and he and Mark and Joe would do well to have him on their team. And he’d make sure to make time to introduce him to some people along the way.)

He was a little surprised to hear from him so soon; he wasn’t even sure if the semester had started yet. But when he opened the email he quickly figured out it had nothing at all to do with setting up an internship.

> _ Chris - _
> 
> _ Hey, it’s Brody. First of all, please don’t tell Mom about this. For one thing, she’ll tell me I’m being ridiculous and shouldn’t butt in when I don’t know what I’m talking about. For another, she’d tell me how bad my formatting and email etiquette is. _

Chris laughs at that.

> _ Anyway, I hope I’m not actually overstepping my bounds here, but I have to say something. Before I do, though, you have to know that this is all me, Mom’s head is nowhere near mine on this, trust me.  _
> 
> _ I know we’ve only met a couple times, so maybe you’re just naturally like this, but you should know that the way you talk and act kind of makes it seem like you might have feelings for her. Like I said, she doesn’t think that at all, _

Chris laughs again, because yeah, maybe that was true as of the last time Brody had seen her, but it certainly wasn’t anymore.

> _ yet, but it seems that way to me, and I think to some of the younger kids too, Ren especially. And I just saw your tweet, and it definitely reinforces that feeling pretty strongly. _
> 
> _ If you do have feelings for her, I actually think that’s great. She could do worse, and you definitely couldn’t do any better. (No offense to you, she’s just that great of a person.) _

Chris’s eyes widen for a second and he actually snorts through his nose. The kid has balls. He admires that. It doesn’t hurt that he’s not wrong.

> _ If you don’t have feelings for her, though, you should know that it does look that way. And I’m not accusing you of doing anything wrong or on purpose, because like I said, maybe that’s just your personality. But even though she doesn’t think anything like that yet, if you keep saying and doing things like that tweet, she might start to think that eventually, and then she might get really hurt when she figures out the truth. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt any more than she already has been. _

Chris couldn’t agree more.

> _ I don’t know how this is going to come across. I hope it doesn’t come across as me being a spoiled brat telling you to stay away from my mom, because that’s not what I’m doing. (For the record I think you’re a great actor and a really great person and if you do have feelings for her, you have the blessing of her first born child.) I just want to make sure you know what you’re potentially doing, because I don’t know if she can take another heartbreak.  _
> 
> _ Sincerely, _
> 
> _ Brody _

Chris just blinks at the screen for a few seconds. For one thing, he hadn’t realized he was being so obvious. Sure, his mom and Scott had figured it out, but they knew him better than anyone in the world. Brody had apparently seen right through him the first time they met. And for another thing, the email made him stupidly, irrationally happy. Technically Brody is just some college kid who used to be one of her students. But to her, he’s an adopted child. Chris seriously doubts she’s asking the guy for relationship advice or anything like that, but knowing that someone who’s a part of her world thinks that he could be good for her makes him feel good about where things might be able to go. 

He hits reply as Dodger jumps up onto the couch next to him. He thinks the kid deserves a response for being so diligent in looking out for his mom.

> _ Brody, _
> 
> _ Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. And thanks for the heads up on that whole email etiquette thing - you might have just saved me a lecture down the road.  _
> 
> _ I haven’t taken offense to anything you’ve said, and I don’t think you’re overstepping. In fact, I think it’s admirable that you care so much about your adopted mom that you want to look out for her. And for the record, I want to look out for her, too. I couldn’t agree more that she doesn’t deserve any more pain than she’s already had to deal with. No one deserves that, but she deserves to have people looking out for her even more than most. _
> 
> _ I don’t know what to tell you, exactly, that doesn’t feel like oversharing or not respecting her privacy, but I can promise you that I have absolutely zero intention of letting her get hurt on my account. _
> 
> _ Chris _
> 
> _ Oh, and don’t forget to hit me up in a few weeks or months about that internship. I’ve got a list of people who’d be lucky to have you. _

_ *** _

_ 1 ½ weeks later (mid/late January, Year 2) _

“I had dinner with Brody last weekend before he went back to school. He asked about you.”

Chris turns, then, angling his body toward hers and giving her a smile. For the past hour he’d stayed as still as possible, his eyes fixed on the television as it played a football game he couldn’t tell you the score of. His mind had wandered the entirety of the first half. 

From the moment she’d gotten to the hotel the previous day, things had felt different. He can’t explain how, exactly, he just knows it’s different. When he’d opened the suite door to let her in, she’d left her suitcase in the hall and stepped forward to wrap her arms around his neck, pushing up onto her toes and pressing her cheek to his as she fisted the shoulder seams of his shirt in her hands. He’d had to hug her back one-handed, laughing into her hair as he grabbed for the door with the other to make sure they didn’t get locked out. When she pulled back, biting her bottom lip and blushing the prettiest shade of pink he's ever seen, she let her hands drift only as far as his biceps and blinked up at him like she didn't know what to say or do next. He just grinned back as wide as he could and said  _ You're here!  _ before grabbing her bag and ushering her into their suite. Then later, as they sat on the couch together after dinner, catching up, she'd asked him how his beer was as he was taking a long draw from it. He said,  _ Good  _ as he set it back on the end table, and she leaned across him to grab it and bring it to her lips, just smirking when he quirked a curious eyebrow at her. She shrugged as she reached across him to replace it.  _ I can't know until I try, right?  _ she almost whispered, and, well. Maybe he's reading too much into it and it really is about the beer. But she's an English teacher, she gets metaphors and probably knows how to use them better than most, and he's not sure that he is reading too much into it. Especially since she'd reached across him with her left hand, and that also happens to have been the exact moment that he realized she wasn't wearing her wedding rings.

That day had been just as … weird? Perfect? Whatever. He’d been able to tell an hour or so into their time on the National Mall that she was cold to the point of discomfort, even bundled up in her coat and gloves, so he’d asked her if she was okay with him holding her close. He wanted to share his body heat with her, to make her more comfortable, but he was also testing the waters, seeing how far she would willingly let him push the bounds of their friendship. When he'd teased her about her southern upbringing making her unfit for the weather, she’d snapped back with " _ Why don’t you come spend the summer with me and we’ll see how you do, Mr. New England,"  _ and all he’d said was, " _ Okay,"  _ before resting his chin on top of her head. She’d tucked her hands into his then where his arms crossed over her chest and he’d held her that way all through the ceremony and inaugural address. They’d spent the rest of the day playing tourist and she’d seemed happy to let him guide her from place to place with his hand on the small of her back. A few times, at some of the more crowded monuments, she’d tucked herself close against his side and when his hand slid across her back to curl around her hip she’d just look up at him with this little smile that made him want to keep taking her to the most crowded places possible just so she’d stay right there, like that, but also made him want to tuck her away, hide her and keep her safe from everyone and everything.

But since they’ve been back in their suite, alone, he’s focused on not screwing this up, not breaking whatever spell seems to have fallen over them, or, worse, not doing something stupid and shitty like hauling her tight against him and kissing the breath from her lungs. Like he’s practically aching to do at this point. So he’s been sitting here, staring straight ahead at the tv, his arm across the back of the couch but very deliberately not touching her, not saying a word that isn’t directly related to this football game that he really couldn’t give two shits about.

But now she’s talking to him -  _ not  _ about football - and turning to face him so that her knee falls on top of his, and clearly she expects a response. “Yeah?” he asks in response to her comment about Brody. He actually is intrigued to see where this is going, after his last communication with the young man. He doesn’t know what, if anything, Brody has said to her about the email conversation they’d had. It’s not like he’d outright told Brody anything, and it’s also not like he’d asked Brody not to say anything to her. He doesn’t know what to expect.

She nods. “He asked if I’d figured out yet that you have feelings for me.”

Chris scoffs through his nose. Well played, kid. “Did you tell him I’ve not exactly been hiding it?”

She smiles a little and her eyelashes flutter as she says, “I did.” She goes on then, lifting her arm to the back of the couch, and he moves his just to make sure he’s not going to make her uncomfortable. “So then he asked me,” she stops and draws in a deep breath, and on the one hand she looks damn near terrified, but on the other hand, she’s lifting the hand that had been in her lap and resting it on his chest, her fingers drifting over the line of his collarbone. He takes that as permission to bring his hand to rest on her knee, over the blanket she’s got spread over her lap. Finally, she stops chewing at her bottom lip to tell him, “He asked me if I’d figured out yet that  _ I _ have feelings for _ you. _ ”

And fuck.  _ Fuck.  _ Because she’s not saying anything, and he’s not about to, not with the way her eyes keep flitting from his eyes to his mouth, and either she wants to kiss him or … Well, he can’t think of an ‘or,’ actually. All he can think is that he’s pretty damn sure she wants to kiss him. And he  _ knows  _ he wants to kiss her. So he just inclines his head the smallest bit in her direction, just enough to let her know that, yeah, he’s in if she is, and he moves his hand from where it hung on the back couch cushions to flatten it carefully, softly, against her back, and when she closes her eyes and breathes deeply he can’t help but smile. 

She starts to lean into him and he’s not going to get there first. He’s not. Because he’s going to let her do this on her terms. But when her nose brushes alongside his, he can’t stop his eyes from falling closed or his head from tilting, just a little, to give her better access. And then her lips are moving - soft, tentative, gentle, all the things he already knows her to be - against his. And he knows it’s a cliche to say that kissing her feels like coming home, but sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason. Because this, kissing her slowly and carefully with his hands on her knee and her back and one of hers now flattened against his chest, gives him the exact same feeling as coming home after being away for too long - the sense of being the best version of himself, the person he’s supposed to be. That feeling is still swirling in his head when she starts to pull away, and he doesn’t try to stop her, but he does tilt his head down to press their foreheads together, needing to maintain that contact. 

He watches her, eyes still closed as she draws her bottom lip, the very same one he’d just had nestled between his own lips, between her teeth and the corners of her mouth pull up into a small, content smile. He’s willing to bet he’s mirroring that smile when she finally opens her eyes to look at him. And when she does, because he just has to be 200% positive about this before anything else is said or done, he asks, “Is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she whispers, and it’s a goddamn miracle that he doesn’t tackle her down onto the couch cushions right then. Instead, he presses his hand to her back with enough pressure to let her know that he’d really, really like to kiss her again, but not so much that she can’t easily back away if it’s not what she wants.

She doesn’t back away, and when her lips meet his again his hand flies up from her knee to curl around her neck, holding her. He’s vaguely aware of her own hand sliding onto the back of his neck, the two of them locked together, as he takes her bottom lip between both of his own. He’s half a second away from tracing his tongue over it, seeing if she’ll open up for him, when she pulls away and draws in such a long, hard breath that it could almost be a gasp.

“Okay?” he asks her, his eyes studying hers for a sign that he’s done something wrong or that she regrets it or anything that says this just isn’t what she really wants. 

She nods and says, “Yeah,” and a tingle runs down his spine when she shifts her hand on his neck, turning it and sliding her fingers up into his hair.  _ That’s nice _ , he thinks. She leans forward and presses a light, careful kiss to the corner of his mouth and she’s gone again before he can turn and capture her lips once more. “I’m good,” she adds, pulling back a bit more and locking her eyes on his, “I just, this has to be slow.” He nods. He can do slow. “I want this,” she tells him, like a promise, then her cheeks and her nose and her ears start to flush and she adds, “I want  _ you _ ,” before dropping her eyes to her lap and laughing a little at herself. He can feel her skin growing hot under his hand where it’s still curled around her neck, almost cradling her jaw, so he moves it back down to her leg, squeezing her knee a little as he leans forward to kiss her forehead. It’s meant to be sweet, reassuring, and he congratulates himself a little when she goes on. “I still don’t know how much time is the right amount, but I’m  _ hoping _ ,” she doesn’t look at him, her eyes closed, as she brings her hands to rest on his shoulders, “that a year is, if not the  _ right  _ amount of time, then at least  _ enough  _ time.”

She stops talking then, but he doesn’t think she’s finished. He’s decided, in the time that’s passed since he first hypothesized that sometimes she just needs to be given an opportunity to put herself out there, just needs to believe that she’s actually going to be heard and listened to, that he was right. So he waits, saying nothing but continuing to smile softly at her as she organizes her thoughts. It gets a little more difficult when she unfolds her legs, stretching them across his thighs, because all he wants to do is gather her up and settle her on his lap and kiss her - her lips, yes, of course, but her nose, her cheeks, forehead, jaw, neck, even her eyelids, if she’ll let him. Instead, he takes the hand that had been on her knee and wraps it almost fully around her ankle when she settles her feet between his thigh and the arm of the couch.

She goes on then, almost like she was waiting for the reassurance that he didn’t mind waiting for her. (He hasn’t. Not one bit.) “I’m afraid that if we don’t go slow, I’m going to get scared, or freak out, and mess up something that, I think, could be really, really good.”

He grins and lifts his hand from the back of her shoulder to tuck the hair that had fallen into her face when she looked down behind her ear then slides it down until it rests in the center of her back. “It can be great,” he promises.

She gives him a little smile and continues. “And that’s why I want to be careful, to, to protect it, give it a fighting chance. Because if I’m not careful, I’ll get caught up in how good, and kind, and, and, god,” she’s blushing again, and laughing softly at herself, “ _ beautiful  _ you are,” he feels himself blush then, which is actually kind of nice, he thinks, “and I’ll do something that, as much as I really, really want to be, I don’t think I’m ready for. Yet.”

He thinks he gets it, but he’s going to make her spell it out for him anyway. “Sooo …”

“Slow.”

“Slow,” he agrees, and they have a brief discussion of what exactly that means, what the boundaries and limits are. It’s light-hearted, and a little bit silly, but he really cares about the answers to everything he asks, and she seems equally sincere in her responses. Then he gets to the question with the most immediate implications, and he smirks, his eyes dancing and mischievous as he asks her if more kissing is included in her definition of ‘slow.’

He can’t help but laugh a little when she tugs at his shoulders as she says, “God, you better.” She’s leaning in before she even finishes the sentence (demand? Whatever, he’s happy to let her boss him around in this way) and for the first time he goes in as well, meeting her halfway. There’s no doubt, no questioning what she wants at this point, so when their lips come together he presses his to hers more firmly, more insistently than the first two times and uses the hand still on her back to pull her closer. And then he does something he’s been wanting to do since he saw that video (longer, really, though that was the first time he’d acknowledged the feeling), something that’s only been intensified ten-fold the past two evenings as she’s come out of her bedroom in soft, well-worn, almost-too-short pajama shorts - he takes that hand that’s been curled around her ankle and slides it slowly up the side of her calf, relishing the feeling of her soft lips against his and her soft skin under his fingers, not stopping until he reaches her knee. And god, he could go farther. His hand is practically itching to go farther. But right then she parts her lips, and his move with them, and her tongue slips into his mouth and  _ fuck _ . His hand stills just below her knee and his fingers flex, the soft flesh of the relaxed, pliant muscle yielding to his grip. 

She withdraws her tongue but makes no effort to actually end the kiss and he finds himself grazing his teeth over her bottom lip. He stops himself then, pulling back and releasing his grip on her calf so that he can drag his hand back down to her foot, which he wraps his hand around just to have something to hold onto. Because he’s just recognized that he’s already dangerously close to pushing her too far. He’s not an animal, he can handle a good make-out session that doesn’t lead to sex. He loves the kissing part, actually. But this is the first time he’s gotten to kiss her. The first time he’s been free to really touch her. And they’ve already agreed to  _ slow _ , and he’s afraid that any more this first time will very quickly spiral into something that is definitely not slow (because she’s already admitted she wants him, and there’s no doubt whatsoever about how much he wants her), and then she’ll think he didn’t mean it when he told her he was okay with that, and … yeah. They just have to stop.

He presses his forehead to hers and forces himself to breathe a few slow, steady breaths through his nose then tells her, his eyes closed because he’s a little afraid he’ll see anger or fear or hurt in hers, “Slow.”

“Slow,” she repeats, and he can’t miss the way her own breathing is uneven and stuttering.

He lets himself look at her then, and her eyes are wide, pupils dilated, and she looks as shaken as he feels, but she doesn’t look like she’s upset with him, so he feels some affirmation in his decision. He tells her that he thinks they need to go back to watching the football game that he’s pretty sure neither of them cares the least bit about. She definitely looks a little disappointed when she nods in agreement, but she also looks relieved. So he tells her, “And I meant what I said about wanting to be able to hold you,” her eyes light up a little when he says that, and she smiles like she’s actively trying not to smile  _ too _ big, and he likes that  _ a lot _ , so much that he feels a little guilty about what he’s going to say next, but it has to be said, “but you know we both have to sleep in our own beds tonight, right? Because …” he lets his voice trail off and just makes his eyes big and round as he shakes his head, pretty sure she’ll get the point.

She shifts, leaning a little farther away from him and moving her hands to rest on his shoulders instead of letting her arms continue to hang around his neck. “No, you’re right. If there’s not at least one closed door between us I’m going to go back on everything I just said, and, as much as it sucks, I really do think it’s what’s best.” The look on her face, apologetic and hopeful at the same time, makes him want to kiss her again. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize,” he admonishes gently, and closes his hand tighter around her foot, pressing it a little more firmly into the couch cushion, when he feels her start to pull her legs back over his, to return them both to their own bubbles of personal space. “But don’t do  _ that _ either. Where’re you going?”

She blinks at him. “You said ‘back to watching football.’”

He gives her a look of exaggerated confusion and exasperation. “Yeah, but I didn’t say you had to go way back over there.”

A slow, sly grin takes over her face as she lifts her legs again. “It’s not that far.”

Oh, that’s how it is. He moves his hand until he can close it all the way around her slender ankle. He would never use his size and strength to physically overpower her, but he’ll pretend that he’s going to, as long as she keeps smirking like that. He pouts for a second, the expression a stark contrast to the more demanding action. “I’ll be good. Promise. Look,” he keeps his hold on her ankle, but takes his other hand off her back to grab the bottom of the blanket bunched up at her waist and pull it down, only taking his hand off her leg once both legs are fully covered by the throw. “There. Stay put?”

She laughs then, her eyes falling closed, and he feels like he’s won something, somehow. “Yeah, I think I can handle that.”

He wraps both arms around her shoulders and pulls her close enough for her head to rest on his shoulder. She settles against him, wrapping her own arms around his waist until her fingers twine together over his hip on the opposite side. “Good,” he tells her just before leaning down to press his lips to the top of her head, pulling back with a smile as he rubs a thumb over her shoulder. He’s waited this long to get this far, he can do slow for as long as she needs.

*****


	5. 100%

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original Chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21404530

_ 6 months together (June 30, Year 2) _

Chris almost doesn’t answer his phone when it rings. It’s been the week - almost two weeks - from hell, and today was just the icing on the cake, between that poor kid getting injured on set and then Scott bailing on their dinner plans. Yeah, he’s mostly an introvert and nine times out of 10 he’s more than happy chilling at home with Dodger. But things have been going downhill pretty much since the moment he and his girl got to the airport in Orlando and had to board separate flights going in opposite directions, and he was actually looking forward to some positive human interaction, since he doesn’t feel like he’s had any since then, not face-to-face, anyway. Instead it looks like he’ll be ordering take-out, again, because he has some chicken and some salmon in the fridge that he could throw on the grill, but even that feels like more work than he wants to do tonight. All he wants to do is get inside, pull up Skype, and get to see her face and hear her voice.

And ultimately, that’s why he  _ does  _ answer the phone. Because he’s only a few minutes from his house, and he’s going to video call her the second his ass hits the couch, and by the time he’s finished talking to her, there’s a very good chance he’ll forget to return this incoming call. And the incoming call happens to be from Mackie, who’s already been giving him shit about ‘ditching’ him. (And that’s not what he’s doing, at all. He just gets caught up in stuff and isn’t great about returning calls or following through on plans if it’s not with the people he’s actually seeing - usually working with - daily. The guys he grew up with get that about him by now and know not to be offended if he seemingly disappears on them for a while, but his newer friends, the ones he’s made on jobs, sometimes don’t realize it’s a  _ him  _ thing and says nothing about the state of their friendship. He should be better about that, he knows, and that’s why he chooses to answer.

“Mack **_ie,_ ** ” he crows when he answers, the bluetooth sending the call through his car’s speakers. It’s mostly an act, that energy level he’s at, but not because of Mackie, just because of the shit time he’s having right now. He’d rather Mackie not pick up on that.

“Hey man, what’re you up to?”

“Eh,” Chris hums, turning onto his road, “not much. Just heading home from set.”

“Cool cool cool,” Mackie says, almost rapid-fire, and Chris grins, because talking to Mackie is inevitably akin to taking a shot of an energy drink. “You got a long weekend, for the Fourth?”

Chris can’t help but roll his eyes and shake his head, because yeah, he does, but there’d been a while earlier in the day when that was up in the air because of all the shit that’s been going down. (And that might actually have been the final straw that made him walk off the film, because his girl is going to be there in just over 48 hours, and he’s not giving up a moment with her because of their dumbassery.) “Yeah, Monday  _ and  _ Tuesday, actually.”

“Sweet,” Mackie says just as Chris is pulling into the driveway. “Well, me and my boy Sebastian -”

“Your boy, huh?” He smirks as he puts the car into park and drops his head back against the headrest. 

“Mine now,” Mackie singsongs, and Chris just snorts out a half-laugh. “Anyway, me and  _ my boy  _ and some of the others from the Falcon show -”

“ _ The Falcon and Winter Soldier _ show, you mean?”

“That’s what I said, the Falcon show.” 

Chris laughs and shakes his head as he gets out of the car and makes his way toward the house. “You better watch it man, that Bucky fanbase is fierce. Trust me, after  _ Endgame  _ I would know.”

“Whatever, you know I’m not worried.” And Chris scoffs, because he does know that. He also knows that Mackie thinks Sebastian hung the moon and would never actually disrespect him. Won’t stop him from talking shit, though. “Anyway, some of us are going to play paintball on Monday. You wanna join?”

Chris is quiet for a second, standing on his own front porch just listening to the surprising quiet from inside the house. Normally by the time he’s made it to the door, he can hear Dodger basically losing his shit inside. He tells himself his boy’s just sleeping or something, because even allowing himself a second of worry about something being wrong with him is more than Chris can handle right now. He shakes it off and works the key into the lock. “I can’t. Sounds like fun, but my girl’s gonna be in town for the long weekend.” He hears Dodger’s nails clicking across the hardwood then and he sighs in spite of himself as he kicks off his shoes and braces for impact. “I don’t plan on being anywhere she’s not for those five days.” Dodger comes flying into the entryway and Chris bends to greet him as Mackie goes on.

“Hey man, bring her! The more the merrier. I’d love to meet this girl that’s got you even more tied to the east coast than usual. And if you’re worried about it being too much of a boys’ club, Van Camp said she was a ‘maybe,’ so if we tell her your girl’s coming, she’ll probably show up too.”

Chris smiles at the offer and gives Dodger one more scratch between the ears as he stands, shaking his head even though Mackie obviously can’t see him. “Nah. I appreciate the offer, seriously, but we’re still staying pretty low-key for-” he stops abruptly when Mackie cackles into the phone.

“Low-key my sexy brown ass. There ain’t one thing about what you’ve told me about this relationship that sounds low-key. If anything, it sounds like you’re completely in love with your girl.”

He’s grinning when he says, “Oh yeah, no, 100 fucking percent.” He laughs then, hard, both at Mackie and at himself, and Dodger seems to take that as his cue to take off back toward the living room, so Chris follows. “That’s not what I meant by low-key. I just mean I want to be careful about going out in public and shit, out here anyway.” His mood shifts then, back to that darker place it had been before they’d started talking. “People are dicks, man.” He realizes he’s stopped moving, so he forces his feet to shuffle forward again, to carry him farther into the house. “And if she gets hurt because of some asshole trying to get a picture or something like that, I’ll lose my shit. It’s -,”

He freezes again, but this time it’s less of an unconscious thing and more like he’s just run into a brick wall. Because he’s standing in his living room and either he’s hallucinating, or he’s got a couch full of Gorgeous Girlfriend grinning up at him. “What the hell?” he says, more to himself than into the phone, then, actually to Mackie, “I gotta, fuck, I gotta go.”

“What’s goin’ on man?” Mackie asks, his voice laced with concern. “Everything okay?”

Chris picks his jaw up off the floor then and he can feel himself grinning like a fool. It takes him exactly four steps to get from where he stopped just inside the living room to just in front of the couch, where she just grins up at him. “Yeah, I’m great, I just gotta go. I’ll uh, I’ll text you later.” He thinks he hears Mackie trying to say something, maybe just some indignant spluttering, as he pulls the phone away from his ear and disconnects the call. He tosses the phone to the opposite end of the couch and bends to press his palms to her cheeks, fingers combing into her hair, so he can hold her still while he presses his lips sharply to hers. “What,” he starts, but he can’t help but lean in to kiss her again. “What are you,” nope, still not done with the kissing. He holds this one out a little longer, lowering himself to his knees as he holds onto her and presses their lips tenderly together. “What are you doing here?” he finally manages to get out, looking slightly up at her as he kneels on the floor in front of the couch. He slides his hands from her cheeks down the sides of her neck, over her shoulders and down her arms to where her hands rest in her lap, then finally curls them around her thighs, needing to feel her to believe that she’s real, that she’s actually there in front of him and that he hasn’t gone completely crazy.

Dodger trots over and drops down by his side, nudging his leg with his nose, so he scratches him between the ears for just a second without taking his eyes off her face, then he moves his hand back to her leg.

And she’s still just grinning down at him. “What? Did you forget I was coming?”

He tightens his grip on her legs. “Friday. You were coming  _ Friday _ . It’s Wednesday. Fuck, it is Wednesday, right?” He lifts his arm then to look at his watch, which doesn’t actually have the date on it, but whatever. His brain isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘fully functioning’ at the moment. He lets himself go, dropping until his butt lands on his heels and slumping forward until his forehead hits her legs. And it’s pretty damn clear now that she’s not a figment of his imagination - or he really has completely lost it - but it still doesn’t make sense to him. “When … Who …” he can’t seem to form a complete sentence, and the chills that run down his spine when she scratches her nails carefully over his scalp don’t help anything. “How …” 

Her voice is teasing when she asks, “Which one of those would you like me to answer?”

It takes him a second to respond; his brain can’t seem to focus on anything other than the way his nerve endings fire as her fingers continue to move through his hair, the feel of the denim stretched over her thighs as he moves his hands up to curl around her hips. “I don’t even fuckin’ know,” he finally manages.

“Your brother picked me up and let me in, a couple hours ago.”

And something about that finally brings him back to the surface. It’s probably the mention of Scott, the realization that she went out of her way to contact him to help her with this when they’d never even met before (they were supposed to meet for the first time this weekend, over lunch), that  _ click _ in his brain when two and two, the reality of the lengths she’s gone to make this happen, along with Scott’s shiftiness when they’d talked earlier, finally add up. He sits up then and his eyes drift off her for the first time, toward his phone at the other end of the couch. “That little shit. That's why he blew me off for dinner.” It’s not like he’s pissed about that, not with what he knows now. And he shouldn’t even be surprised, honestly.

She laughs then and even though he knows, intellectually, that it doesn’t sound any different over the phone or Skype, this, the way it sounds now, with her right in front of him and her forefinger running along the line of his nose while her legs unfold in front of him, is like magic, like a soothing balm on his absolutely exhausted heart. When her feet are on the floor and she pats her lap with one hand, an invitation for him to make himself at home there, he doesn’t even know what to call the noise that comes out of him.

It’s just that everything has kind of fallen apart since they were last together. And something about the way it’s all happened - saying goodbye to her after spending a week together for their birthdays, at DisneyWorld, no less, his favorite non-Boston place, heading back to the west coast after a good long while back home (and in Virginia), starting a new job, watching things on that job go to shit from the word go - has flipped a switch on his mostly contained anxiety. He’s had it under control for a while now, and it’s been a long time since it’s caused him any real problems, anything more than that overwhelmed feeling when he has to go to conventions and do press and shit. But for the last week and a half or so he’s felt it building, a feeling he hasn’t had since, well, he’s not even sure exactly when the last time was. So he hopes she doesn’t mind it when all he can manage to do is pull himself up onto the couch and rest his head on her lap, working one hand under her leg and reaching for her free hand with the other. He’s a fidgeter, nothing new about that. He just can’t seem to keep his hands still for long. So once he has hold of hers, he draws it down to her knee, right in front of his face, and plays with her fingers while she continues to pet over his hair.

He drifts off, just kind of floats away a bit to the feel of her leg under his cheek and one of her hands combing over his scalp and down the back of his neck over and over again while he manipulates the other this way and that. When he comes back to himself it could be that five minutes have passed, or it could be an hour. Honestly? He’s too content to care one way or the other. “God, baby. This is so nice. I’ve had the worst fucking week,” he tells her, nuzzling his cheek against her leg just to feel her.

“I know,” she answers gently without so much as pausing what she’s doing.

He keeps his eyes forward, watching the way her much smaller hand yields to his, when he asks, “Is that why you did this? Because I’ve had a shitty week?”

“Didn’t hurt. My conference for today and tomorrow got cancelled last week; I was gonna ask what you thought about me coming out a couple days early. But then every time we've talked you’ve seemed so stressed, so I just looked into it myself, to surprise you, and it was surprisingly easy to get my flight changed. I just wanted to do something nice for you.” He’s trying to collect his thoughts, to make his brain translate what his heart is feeling so he can tell her how much it means to him that she would do  _ this  _ for  _ him _ , all because his work life is kind of going to hell at the moment, when she goes on, rushing through the next bit like she’s nervous. “I mean, I hope you consider this something nice.”

He wants to ask if she’s actually, somehow, serious, except he knows that she is, because she’s exactly the kind of person to do maybe the best thing that’s ever been done for him (sure, there have been other gestures that have maybe been grander, definitely more expensive, but there has never been anything that was more exactly what he needed at the very moment that he really, really just  _ needed _ ) and then second-guess herself. So, he drops her hand and uses his to push himself not gently over onto his back so he’s almost glaring at her. “Did you hear what I just said? Yeah, baby girl, it’s nice. Coming home and finding you on my couch was probably the only thing that could have turned this clusterfuck of a day around.” And then he thinks of something that he doesn’t want to say, but knows he has to. He reaches to cradle the side of her neck in his hand. “You know I still gotta work the next two days, though. Right?”

One of her hands stays on his chest and the other makes its way back to his hair, combing from his forehead back to his crown, and honestly, he’s not sure what it is that’s got her doing that the way she is, except that maybe it’s just her first instinct since she likes it so much when he does it to her, but at the moment he’s kind of hoping she never stops. And he had no idea he liked it so much, but right now, with her doing it, it’s quickly becoming one of his favorite things. “I know,” she nods. “I’ll just hang out here, mostly, if you don’t mind me being in your house when you’re not here. And I can take Dodger for a hike, your brother said he’d come get me if I wanted to get out of the house. That way I’m coming and going in his car, just in case.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” he smiles as he shakes his head at her, his eyes falling closed. “Walking into this house with you already here is ... I don’t even know. It’s awesome." When he opens his eyes again they just so happen to be focused directly on her lips (it’s not intentional, he  _ swears  _ it’s not intentional). He drags his eyes back up to hers, soft and warm and full of love, maybe a hint of mischief, too, and when he can’t help but look back to her lips, she’s wearing a smirk. "You know I gotta kiss you again, right?" She starts to nod and he doesn’t even let her get in one full nod before he’s tightening his hand around her neck and carefully pulling her down to meet him as he pushes himself up with his other arm.

He starts slow, easy, gentle, sweet little G-rated presses of his lips to hers. But before he knows it, she’s tracing his bottom lip with her tongue and all bets are off. He tilts his head, working for a better angle, and the moment his lips part she’s slipping her tongue in there and  _ god _ , the taste of this woman, the velvet softness of her tongue alongside his, it’s fucking everything. He doesn’t choose to tighten his hand just that little bit more around her neck, to pull her a little closer, but he recognizes it as it’s happening, and when she starts to pull away, dragging her teeth along his bottom lip as she does, he tugs her right back in. He copies everything she’s just done to him, and when his teeth sink into her lip - just a little, just enough to sting a bit but not actually  _ hurt  _ \- he feels her shift, her hips and legs moving under him and her hand fisting tighter in his shirt where it had rested on his stomach. 

He pulls away then, before he does something he shouldn’t. “Fuck,” he growls, pressing another kiss to the corner of her mouth and just kind of hovering there, his nose brushing her cheek.

“Chris,” she starts, and her voice sounds far, far too small, “I-”

“Don’t do that,” he tells her, and just to be safe he presses a soft kiss to her cheek. “You know you don’t have to do that. I just really fuckin’ like kissing you.” 

The thing is, he gets it, the whole ‘waiting to have sex’ thing. His  _ brain _ understands her caution, her fear; he knows that she’s dealing with not only anxiety but also PTSD, and while the trauma she experienced wasn’t sexual, it did revolve around her long-term romantic and sexual partner and while he certainly can’t say that he relates, he gets why the issue of sex is a sensitive one and he’s not going to pressure her over it. (He’s not sure if or when there will come a breaking point where he can just no longer carry on a romantic relationship with her that isn’t sexual, but if that breaking point exists, he’s certainly not there yet; if they still haven’t had sex a year in, maybe he’ll start to reevaluate whether it’s a bigger issue, but for now, he’ll wait.) His  _ dick  _ on the other hand, well, that guy’s kind of a traitor and a shit disturber and doesn’t always seem to get the messages that his brain is sending. And right now is  _ definitely  _ one of those moments.

He smooths his hand over her hair and kisses her forehead because he doesn’t want to give her any room to think he might be upset with her, then lays back down with his head on her lap, grabbing a throw pillow to cover the bulge straining at the fly of his jeans as he goes. He knows there’s no way she doesn’t know what’s going on, but she doesn’t say anything about it, which he loves her for. 

Chris changes the subject to Scott, because if anything will get rid of his  _ issue  _ quick, fast, and in a hurry, it’s talking about his brother, and they tease back and forth for a couple minutes until Dodger is jumping up from his spot on the floor and running to the kitchen and back again then skittering around somewhere in the middle. He doesn’t need to look at his watch to know exactly what time it is - dinnertime. For bubba, anyway.

When he gets back to the couch he hesitates to reclaim his former position, telling her he feels bad about just using her as a pillow after everything she’s done for him. He doesn’t know what he expected her reaction to be, but it certainly wasn’t laying herself down along the back of the couch and opening her arms for him to lay with her. It takes just a tiny bit of convincing - the sex thing is still on his mind after how that kiss had played out, and he doesn’t want to push any boundaries - then he’s laying right back down, burrowing into her warmth (not so much literally, in the middle of the summer in L.A., but figuratively, metaphorically) and resting his head on her chest. They’ve never done this before, lain together like this, both of them. He’s wanted to - he really likes cuddling - and in Florida she’d actually insisted that she’d be completely fine sharing a bed with him instead of sleeping in the suite’s other bedroom, like they’d done that very first weekend in D.C. He’d really, really wanted to take her up on that. He didn’t, though. That was partly because of his traitorous dick and the fact that Chris knew without a doubt that the moment she got all nice and comfortable, curled up around or against him, he’d be hard. And she’s felt it before, there’s no way she hasn’t, as much time as they spend kissing, pressed against one another or with her legs thrown over his lap. But that’s not the same as being in bed together. And he knows she’s smart enough to understand biology and that sometimes it just happens, that just because his dick is hard that doesn’t mean he actually plans to try anything, but he didn’t want to risk making her uncomfortable. The other reason he’d declined though, the bigger reason, honestly, was because she’d had a few drinks that night, and she’d been  _ so  _ insistent that he was afraid that maybe it was the alcohol talking more than it was her, and if they’d shared a bed, and she’d woken up in the morning with a single regret, that might have broken him.

Once they’re settled, her hand running through his hair,  _ again  _ \- and  _ god,  _ how did he make it to 40 without realizing how much he absolutely fucking loves that? - she asks him if he wants to talk about his shitty week at work and he really, really doesn’t. So he tells her that. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to her; he’s already told her all of it anyway. It’s just that he feels so  _ good  _ right now, so peaceful, so content. And he doesn’t want to mar that by bringing up that shit that’s now officially in the past (where he really fucking hopes it will stay from this point forward). And he can tell she’s a little antsy, because she pretty quickly changes the subject, asking him about the call he was on when he came in. He doesn’t mind, not at all, because he knows it was obvious he was talking about her and so he feels like she has a right to know what was being said. He does worry, just a little bit, that she will take his refusal of the invitation as something that it isn’t, that she’ll think he’s trying to keep her from meeting his friends or something, when that’s very much not the case. Hell, she’s met his whole family already, and they’re the most important people in the world to him, so at this point anyone else is just a bonus. That thought doesn’t even seem to occur to her though, and instead she gives him permission (that’s not the right word, they don’t do the whole control thing, her blessing, maybe? Whatever) to go hang out with them without her, but there’s no way in  _ hell  _ he’s doing that, and he tells her so, in a conversation that quickly devolves into absolute silliness.

She tells him she has one more question about his conversation with Mackie, and she sounds adorably sheepish when she does. He tries not to laugh when he tells her she is well within her rights to ask, since, as he’d already thought to himself, he was clearly talking about her and she has every right to know. “What  _ didn’t  _ you mean by ‘low-key?’” she asks, and he’s already forgotten most of the specifics of the conversation, he had the moment he saw her on his couch, actually. He’s trying to piece it together in his brain when she goes on. “You said we were keeping things low-key, then you said ‘That’s not what I meant by low-key.’ What didn’t you mean?”

“Oh.” He doesn’t know why he’s embarrassed. It’s not like he’s going to say anything she doesn’t already know. Still, he feels his cheeks prickle with heat. “He said I could bring you along, that it’d be cool to meet you, and I told him we were trying to stay low-key for now.” He runs his hand over her hair. “He said it seemed less low-key and more like I was completely in love with you.” She turns and presses a kiss to his chest through his shirt and his breath catches in his throat as he plays with her hair. He feels like he needs to explain why Mackie has such strong feelings about their relationship. “He, uh, he asked a while back when I was coming back out this way because he said it seemed like I was spending more time in Boston than I usually do between jobs. I told him about you then. And I may have talked about you a few times since.”

She doesn’t say anything at first, and he wonders if he messed up, somehow. If, contrary to his previous worry about her feeling like he’s trying to hide her from his friends, she’s upset that he’s told people about them, about her. Finally though, she looks up at him and grins. “Yeah, well, I’m 100 fucking percent completely in love with you, too.”

He kisses her again, because he wants to and he  _ can,  _ but he makes sure not to let this one get out of hand like the last one had, not with the way he’s moved her so that she’s lying almost on top of him now. “I’m starting to get that impression,” he tells her before she leans in for one more kiss, which he barely returns thanks to the grin on his lips. 

She makes herself comfortable draped across him there on his couch, and once she’s finally stopped moving, wiggling against him to find just the right spot, he wraps his arms tight around her and within minutes her breathing has evened out and he knows she’s asleep. She’s earned it, he figures, between the jet lag and the time difference and just probably the anticipation and adrenaline rush she’s felt all day waiting to get here, waiting for him to get home. So when he reaches out toward the coffee table for his phone, he thanks god for long arms and makes sure to move as slowly and smoothly as possible, managing to retrieve it and get himself situated again without waking her up. The first thing he does is set a timer for 45 minutes; that’ll be a nice nap without ruining them for the night and it’ll have them up and moving again in time for dinner. The next thing he does is open the front-facing camera and hold his arm out. He’s an old pro at this, really, the number of these he’s taken with Dodger, but as much as he loves his best bud, this one is so, so much better than any of those, her head resting on his chest and her eyelashes fanned across her cheek, one hand resting over his shirt just in front of her face and a smile tugging at his lips even as he turns to press a kiss to her hair. And the last thing he does before dropping the phone on the end table above his head and closing his own eyes is to drop that picture into a text message that he shoots off to Mackie with the message  _ I’m 100fucking% great. _


End file.
